Selkirk quest: Kopczynski applies climbing prowess to horizontal route

Chris Kopczynski has had an enduring relationship with Chimney Rock.

By 1973, after a collegiate wrestling career and graduating from Washington State University, he had made 26 ascents of Chimney Rock, the iconic pillar of granite in the Idaho Selkirk Mountains east of Priest Lake.

“There’s something about it,” he said, elaborating on George Mallory’s “because it’s there.”

Last week he was back in the neighborhood with another sort of goal that evolves from having been there.

Forty years ago, “Kop” had already ascended nearly every crack on all four sides of the Chimney and completed six new routes, including two new routes on the East Face.

He and John Roskelley had become known for international mountaineering, including the Russian Pamirs. The Spokane duo then teamed to become the first American pair to climb the Eiger.

But they also applied their growing rack of skills locally to make the first free ascent of the East Face of Chimney Rock.

“Most people don’t realize what we have in our backyard,” Kop said.

On Feb. 22, 1973, Kopczynski made the first chilling – in every sense of the word – winter ascent of the Selkirks spire. “Nearly froze to death,” he said.

Back in the Selkirks over the Labor Day holiday, the 68-year-old Spokane contractor was joined by his daughter, Kelly Kopczynski, and family friend Lexi Greenwood.

Chimney Rock was a waypoint rather than a destination for this trip.

“This is my second attempt at traversing the crest of peaks, without needing a rope, from Mount Roothaan over to and up Harrison Peak and down to Two Mouth Lakes and out via the Wig Wam,” Kop said.

He completed much of the route with Jim States in March 1981 on snowshoes when hard-packed snow allows relatively easy walking over the jumble of granite boulders litering the Selkirk crest.

In summer, the route is much more complicated and grueling. One must hike, scramble, crawl, weave and hop on boulders that sometimes teeter under a hiker’s boot toward a potential crushing fall.

Incidentally, Kop and States were in tip-top condition in 1981, the year after they’d teamed with Roskelley and Kim Momb for the locally grown Spokane-to-Makalu Expedition. That unassisted alpine-style ascent has been recognized by the American Alpine Club as one of the world’s 10 “most significant climbs of the 20th century.”

But that’s history.

Last week, the two Kops and Greenwood cashed in favors with family members for vehicle shuttles and were dropped off up from Priest Lake on Horton Ridge, site of a former fire lookout.

Recreation isn’t a primary purpose of the Idaho Department of Lands, which becomes obvious on its routes to the trailhead. The forestry roads are mostly unmarked, but Kop knew each turn intimately.

The first part of their trek was on the pretty much user-made trail that climbs the ridge for nearly 2 miles to a good viewpoint near the top of Mount Roothaan that’s popular with lake visitors wanting a closer look at Chimney Rock.

“This doesn’t get any easier over the years,” Kop said, bringing up the rear behind the two 21-year-olds.

It didn’t help that he was packing nearly two gallons of water with his backpacking gear and food for three days.

“I hope to find water for camping on the north face basin of Silver Dollar (Peak), but I’m not sure,” he said.

Chimney Rock played peekaboo through the clouds and fog beyond the granite-strewn cirque basin below the viewpoint. The threesome regrouped, rehydrated and Chris took the lead on the un-trailed route he’s covered dozens of times off Roothaan to the east side of the crest on foot or skis.

Heading down into the steep, slick slope and granite boulders and slabs, Kop seemed to effortlessly walk away from the youngsters.

“Hey, who do you think you are, a mountain climber?” Kelly called out in jest.

“Yeah,” Greenwood chimed in as the women began chuckling. “You act like you could climb Everest.”

“Or the Seven Summits,” Kelly said as her dad moved well out of hearing range. “You look like you’ve done this before.”

They knew, of course, that Kop is the ninth American to summit the world’s highest peak and the 11th person in the world to climb the highest peak on each of the seven continents.

“Dad took my brother and I to climb Mount Rainier,” Kelly recalled. “On the way down, he fell into a crevasse and I had to fall into an ice-ax arrest to hold him.

“I was yelling and trying to communicate, but with the wind blowing, and him out of sight in the crevasse, we couldn’t hear each other.”

A guided climbing team came along and helped with communication. But it was Kelly and Quinn who assisted their world-class mountaineering dad out of the formerly snow-covered crevasse, the likes of which have become icy tombs for countless glacier travelers through history.

“In all his years of climbing Everest and all those other mountains, that was the first time he’d fallen into a crevasse – and he was tied in to his kids,” Kelly said chuckling again.

“What really get’s me is that he said we could have gone to Disneyland,” Kelly said, her smile fading to stern. “That would have been fun.”

Kop was on autopilot as they skirted the base of Chimney Rock. The women looked ahead and saw him moving with much the same grace and speed as the mountain goat nanny and kid that were working through the rock rubble nearby.

The route heading farther north on the gnarly crest was becoming less obvious and more difficult.

Kop scouted off the ridge beyond the Chimney spire and saw a 100-foot-long north-side traverse, very easy climbing by his standards but also very exposed. He sized up the risk and turned around. “The goal is to find a family route we can do safely without ropes,” he said.

They backtracked and dropped to the cairned hiking route coming up to Chimney from the Pack River side. They skirted cliffs and struggled up again to rejoin the ridge.

“Lost a good hour and a half here,” Kop said.

Slow going is not foreign to him. During the first winter ascent of Chimney, he’d labored all morning and into the afternoon at a glacial pace toward his goal. He’d written that he made only 15 feet per hour as he pounded in pitons for protection and cleared the hoary ice covering the vertical rock route for handholds.

Cross-country hiking on the crest, which looks like an earthquake disaster zone, also dropped him to the speed of a glacier.

“I figured we could make a half-mile per hour,” he said. But the route-finding around sharp ridge crests, the constant battle of climbing over, around, though, and inside brush and trees with too much weight – mostly water weight – had the Kop crew trudging at just over a quarter-mile per hour.

About 4 p.m. near the base of Silver Dollar, they crossed paths with two athletes who’d attempted a round trip from Horton Ridge to Beehive Lakes and back at a running pace with only one very light daypack between them.

They saw that they weren’t going to make it in a day, so they’d turned back.

“They seemed stunned at the struggle of the terrain,” Kop said, noting that it looks so easy on Google Earth.

Although they learned from the two “runners” that water was available at the base of Silver Dollar, Kop began adding up their recon report with what he knew from past exploration.

“The terrain beyond Silver Dollar is more of the same traversing, going around rock spires, fins and exposed ridge tops,” he said.

He calculated 16 hours of effort for the team to reach Harrison from Silver Dollar base camp.

That was that.

They turned around, found a beautiful flat campsite on the ridge and reveled in the sunset high above it all. There’s an edge to relaxation and scenic beauty on the Selkirk Crest in September. Ice was forming in their water bottles as they saw yet another group of hikers attempting a similar route toward Beehive Lakes.

Instead of bailing out the way they’d started their trek from Horton Ridge, the Kop team traversed and bushwhacked to camp the next night on Eddy Peak. There they endured what Kop called “a marvelous hailstorm like a scene out of the movie, ‘The Ten Commandments.’”

On the third morning, they looked for motorcycle and jeep trails Kop had discovered in the past and plunged 12 miles down to Priest Lake and civilization near Bear Creek Bay.

“We made notes for the next attempt,” Kop said, noting that little of lasting value in his life was accomplished on the first try.

“Knowing exactly where the water is located will enable me to cut 10 pounds off my pack and 8 pounds each off the girls’ packs.

“I’m convinced the demand for a ‘Selkirk Crest Trail’ from Roothaan to Two Mouth Lakes will continue to grow. More people are attempting this every year from the Priest Lake side.

“I call it ‘Between Heaven and Earth.’”