Here I’m belaying on Table Ledge, looking down at Chip Chace as he follows the last of the overhanging headwall pitches. A party is visible on the Casual Route to our right. The next pitch overhangs as well and is one of the best pitches anywhere - right at the top of the Diamond at almost 14,000 feet, leaning out 1600 feet above Mills Glacier, and 9,000 feet above the great plans of Northern Colorado stretching out to Nebraska. D1, also known as the Kamps-Rearick Route, was the first climb on the Diamond, done in 1960. It’s one of my favorite Diamond climbs, because it’s the plumb center-line on the wall and it overhangs wildly. It’s always a big adventure.

In 1978 John Bachar and Billy Westbay freed the D1 line, something that really blew me away at the time. But the way they did it may never be repeated again (or shouldn’t be …). The main crack system above Table Ledge turns into a soaking wet, overhanging, off-width for about 100 feet until widening into the final, easier bombay chimney. When Kamps and Rearick got to this spot in 1960 they never would have been able to climb this feature. As a young teenager, I read their account of the climb in the American Alpine Journal that described how Kamps leaned way out and discovered a small left-facing corner about 8 feet left of the central off-width. He tensioned left to the little corner and then easily aided up this elegant feature with dry, bullet-proof rock.

However in 1978, Bachar and Westbay had not done their reading and didn’t know about the in-obvious feature to the left. So, Westbay launched straight up the wet, overhanging, unprotected off-width, doing one of the most horrifying leads in the history of the universe, and they finished the climb.

In 1980, I went up on the D1 with a 22-year-old Boulder hotshot named Jeff Achey - this was our first climb together and we became prolific partners over the next few years. My intention was to free climb the original Kamps-Rearick line with the beautiful gently overhanging feature above Table Ledge. I succeeded in on-sighting this pitch at 5.12-, possibly the hardest alpine free-climbing pitch in the world at the time. Since 1980, anyone who free climbs the D1 does it this way and not the way Westbay led it - I see no reason why anyone would ever repeat Westbay’s lead. Bachar and Westbay are both gone now, but their heroic ascent of the D1 should not be forgotten.