Pretty Tall for a Little Guy: Mikey Schaefer
Grabbing the pinch and holding his body tight to the wall, Mikey danced his feet up and stabbed for a crimpy ear of granite. A thousand feet of plutonic rock on Yosemite’s Middle Cathedral swept out below him as he fought for the first free ascent of the 2,000-foot Father Time (VI 5.13b). In the fall of 2010, having just established an 18-pitch 5.12c on the same formation, Mikey walked to the base of Middle Cathedral once again to check out a steep headwall to the west. He would spend 60 days over the next two and a half years hand-drilling 113 bolts and rope soloing many of the 20 pitches, which include 5.12 slab, a V7/V8 crux, and two 5.13 sections. In the fall of 2012, after 8 days on the wall, Mikey freed Father Time.
Mikey and his partner Shanjean in the Buttermilks.
Born into a suburban family in Tacoma, Washington, Mikey started exploring climbing because his brother John, who was two years his senior, had been climbing with his Boy Scout troop.
“We had a chalkbag, so I think that makes it official rock climbing,” said Mikey. At 13, Mikey and his brother went to a small crag outside Breckenridge, Colorado, on a family trip. They did some easy free soloing, scrambling on the rocks in their tennis shoes. Later that summer, the pair went to Fossil Rock in Washington where Mikey attempted his first lead, a 5.10b. He didn’t send.
“I got the rope up it though,” he said, a goal that would become a marked measure of success throughout the rest of his climbing career. The brothers moved on to Spire Rock, a man-made climbing formation 15 miles south of Tacoma. They hung out at the local climbing shop, met partners, and climbed more with the Boy Scouts. Mikey progressed, surviving the learning curve of trad climbing and pushing toward bigger walls quickly.
“Our whole scene was a little loose,” the laconic Mikey said of his early days. During his spring break in ninth grade, Mikey and his 16-year-old friend Wes took Wes’ car and drove from Washington to Yosemite, where the pair attempted the Aquarian Wall (VI 5.7 A3) on El Capitan. They brought two Walmart tri-folding lawn chairs to use as a sort of portaledge and hauled their school backpacks. They couldn’t afford good equipment, and without a good mentor, Mikey had to learn from experience. After climbing the first four pitches, a spring storm washed them off the wall. “We bailed because the weather got bad, not because we didn’t know how to get the rope up,” he said.
For Mikey, this first trip to Yosemite started a long love affair with the enormous granite walls. In between his junior and senior years in high school, he spent the summer in the park, and after he graduated, he returned to Yosemite.
In 1996, a 17-year-old Mikey met Blair Williams, a Washington school teacher, at the climbing gym in Lacy, Washington. “I was 26 and had only been climbing for three years. During that time we both had more Naivety and ambition than experience,” said Blair.
Since the pair had similar school schedules with Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring and Summer breaks off. They climbed together, taking trips to the Valley and climbing their first El Cap route together: Tangerine Trip (VI 5.9 A3). They then tackled other wall routes like The North America Wall (VI 5.8 A2), Shortest Straw (5.7 A4), and Lost in America (5.10 A4). They topped out Lost in America during a winter storm, trudging through three feet of snow to reach the East Ledges rappels.
Mikey’s Fathertime montage from when we topped out the formation.
Though Mikey made significant gains early on in the rock climbing department, his climbing studies didn’t come without some close calls. As an uneducated ice climber, Mikey led a 60-foot pitch of wet ice at Banks Lake in eastern Washington, running out the easy climbing to the anchor. At the top of the route, he wrapped his arm around a nine-foot-tall tree. Though the tree appeared dubious, he leaned back while holding onto it to clip a slung rock horn. The tree ripped out of the ground, and he flipped upside down, falling the entire length of the route and hung right next to his belayer, looking him in the eyes.
“I was kind of scared, but it happened so quickly,” says the typically unphased Mikey. “The stress wasn’t prolonged. It wasn’t too crazy.”
In July 2001, after five years of wall climbing together, Mikey and Blair, traveled to the Ruth Gorge in Alaska, spending 12 days establishing Little Big Man (VI 5.10 A3, 4,000 feet) on the south face of Mt. Bradley. Six months later, the pair ventured to Patagonia for the first time where they established Beg Borrow and Steal, a 1,150-foot 5.10d on the east face of Cerro Pollone.
“I’ve never been one to tick big-name routes so much. It’s more important for me to do a first ascent than to go repeat a route,” Mikey says. “I’m not always driven by the grades or out to do the hardest thing. For me, it’s about finding something I get to be somewhat creative on.”
“Even on those early trips, he always had his camera,” Blair says. Despite Blair’s insistence that they move light and fast in the alpine, Mikey brought a homemade tripod to Alaska and would stop climbing to take photos.
“I enjoyed the technical aspects of it. I enjoy playing with the camera itself as a tool. I grew up enjoying climbing magazines: Climbing, Rock & Ice, The American Alpine Journal...” Mikey says. “I found a lot of inspiration from those photos back in the day. I think now I’m able to provide that for other people. They had a big impact on me. It’s nice to do that for other young climbers now.”
Lately, Mikey’s been renovating his house in Reno, California. He just took out the chimney and was very pleased about how easily it just popped right out from the wall. It only took two saw-zall blades.
Mikey’s accidents and failures early in his career taught him prudence and safety, attributes that led him to become a guide at the Yosemite Mountaineering School at 21. He worked for six years in the Valley and Tuolumne, guiding clients on easy terrain, learning about route finding, moving quickly and safely on moderate terrain, and taking the Advanced Rock Guides Course with the AMGA.
Even though he spent all day climbing for work, Mikey still found time to climb for himself. In 2005, he established the technical face climb, The Night Shift, an 800-foot 5.12+ route on Fairview Dome in Tuolumne, hand-drilling two dozen bolts on the route at night after work. During that time, he photographed Fairview Dome, capturing the stars over the High Sierra dome and selling his first photo to Patagonia. He kept developing routes in the area, bolting and sending Rise and Fall of the Albatross (5.13) on Daff Dome and freeing The Dividing Line (5.13) on Schultz’s Ridge in the Valley. In 2006, at Index, Washington, near his hometown in Tacoma, Mikey made the third ascent of City Park (5.13). The seasonal, flexible schedule of being a climbing guide afforded Mikey the opportunity to climb and travel. Before vanlife was a thing, Mikey bought a black 2004 Mercedes Sprinter. He built it out with a bed, cabinets, and a place to hold flowers. He continued to travel for alpine rock but with mixed success.
In 2006, Mikey traveled to Pakistan with Micah Dash and Eric DeCaria to climb Ueli Bihao, a 20,000-foot peak in the Trango Valley. While traveling, Mikey picked up a gastro-intestinal tract bug outside of Skardu. He aspirated vomit, which turned into bacterial pneumonia but he kept continued hiking for three and a half days from Askole to Shipton Spire base camp, gaining elevation. After 36 hours at Shipton, Micah and Eric decided that Mikey needed to be flown out. As the helicopter’s blade whipped basecamp to land, Mikey removed his camera and took a single picture of a flower, his only photo from the trip.
“In my photography and in my climbing, I look at variables that need to be solved. I’ve never felt like an artistic person,” Mikey describes with his penchant modesty. “To me that’s more of an engineer, I’m not really creating anything. It already exists. I just have to make all the variables line up the right way.”
After Pakistan, he returned to Yosemite and quit his guide job to climb, amassing 30 ascents of El Capitan, including a send of the Freerider (5.12d) and single-day ascents of The West Face of the Leaning Tower (5.13a A0) and the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome (5.12).
In the Yosemite Lodge cafeteria in 2008, Mikey sat with local and Stonemaster Dean Fidelman and Jane Sievert, the photo editor at Patagonia. Dean introduced Mikey as a photographer despite Mikey’s insistence, “I’m not a photographer, I just own a camera.” Jane mentioned that Patagonia would be printing a Yosemite special for the next catalogue. In classic Mikey style, he fixated on working, waking before dawn and staying out well into the night. He ran around the Valley for a week, using his years of climbing in the area and his climbing skills to create unique photos. He worked hard and sold three of the pictures.
Eventually, Mikey’s climbing and photography careers merged into one. He took 10 trips to Patagonia, climbing there every winter for a decade, where he established new routes on all seven of the peaks on the Fitz Roy skyline (see “Mikey’s Fitz Roy Sky Line Tick List” sidebar), documenting his ascents and selling the photos. He eventually became a staff photographer at Patagonia and began doing some work with National Geographic. When the magazine wanted to put together a feature on Yosemite climbing, Mikey captured Dean Potter free soloing Heaven (5.12d) at Glacier Point and landed the international cover, one of the most presitigious photo spots an adventure photographer can land. However, the photoshoots were far from casual outings for Mikey.
“I just pulled up the end of the rope and it was completely cut,” Mikey says of a National Geographic photoshoot near the Musandam Peninsula, off the northern coast of Oman in 2014. He had just climbed a small peak that jutted straight out of the ocean. “It was rock climbing, but it might as well have been alpine climbing in a way,” he says. “If you’d put a glacier around it, it would have been the exact same thing as the other bullshit I’ve done.”
Three-quarters of the way up the peak, while leading a 5.10- pitch, a shoulder-length sling on his harness caught on a small dinner plate of rock. Mikey pulled it off and tossed it. He climbed another 40 or 50 feet, built an anchor, and then pulled up his rope, only to find it had been completely chopped. “It’s one thing to solo when you know you’re soloing. It’s a little different to not actually be tied in when you’re on belay,” he describes.
In May of 2012, Mikey met alpinists Dylan Johnson and Josh Wharton. Wharton convinced the pair that the short approach to the Greenwood-Locke (V 5.8 A2) on Mt. Temple would be a good objective. “Mikey is here to shoot some ‘authentic’ alpine climbing for Patagonia,” wrote Wharton in an article for Gripped. “The north face of Temple is probably a bit of a stretch for a photo-op, but Dylan and I are too selfish to waste good weather on an easier route better suited to posing.” Even though the trio climbed in the spring, the men encountered winter conditions requiring axes and crampons. Mikey photographed the ascent as he climbed with the pair. “100 meters above the top of the Dolphin [couloir], and with the lights of Lake Louise stretched out below, Mikey captures some phenomenal images,” Wharton wrote. “Lesson number 77: It’s possible to actually get real-deal alpine climbing photos, but only with a photographer that is also a badass climber.”
Mikey bouldering in the Buttermilks
“There are times when there’s 30 to 40 Americans down there climbing. It’s like being in Camp 4 sometimes,” Mikey says of the increase in climber activity in Patagonia. With Fitz Cahall of Duct Tape Then Beer, he released a short film about climbing the seven peaks on the Patagonia skyline, and the photos, slideshows, and movies that Mikey and others have produced on the area have brought more climbers to Patagonia, but many of the climbers are too inexperienced for a place as demanding as Patagonia.
“I think there’s an overall regression in knowledge and ability. They are rock climbers, but they’re not really prepared for the alpine,” Mikey says, but his own solid abilities differentiate him from the pack. While he admits to not being the most athletic climber, he has a solid understanding of big wall rescue, how to move safely on moderate terrain, and how to read the mountains and their unforgiving weather patterns. Plus, an innate ability and desire to problem solve and climb strategically have helped him achieve large goals in big mountains.
In August 2010, Mikey and Colin Haley sat in Seattle, using detailed weather forecasting to attempt a “smash and grab” style ascent in the Stikine Ice Cap region on the British Columbia-Alaska border. Instead of sitting on the glacier for weeks, they watched the weather, “smashed” into the range, and then “grabbed” their objective.
“You never really set up a basecamp, and you don’t go up there on a set date. You do your climb, then you come home. Trips are less than a week round-trip,” says Mikey of this style. When the weather cleared outside of Petersburg, Alaska, they booked flights for the next morning and took a helicopter to the basecamp below the Devil’s Thumb, a prominent peak in the region. They bought their tickets on a Tuesday night, and two and a half days later, they were leaving basecamp at Devil’s Thumb to go climb.
Over three days, the pair ticked The Diablo Traverse (5.10 A2) on the Devil’s Thumb Massif, climbing over the summits of the Witches Tit, and the Devil's Thumb.
“It was a cool line, a cool location. We were the only people in the range,” Mikey says of the traverse. “It had mostly good climbing but there was enough shitty climbing to keep it kind of real.” When Mikey, Josh Wharton, and Andrew Rothner made the second free ascent of the Southeast Ridge of Cerro Torre (VI 5.13b), commonly known as the Compressor Route, he pointed to the fact that modern alpinism disregards the “by any means necessary” ethos of the past. “As it becomes easier just to get to the top of something, you have to add more to it,” he says, suggesting that free climbing is the future of alpinism.
Mikey posing for his senior yearbook portrait.
A few years ago, Mikey bought a ranch in Redmond, Oregon, a short bike ride from Smith Rock. A big step for the man that claims to never have a plan more than six months in advance, the four small yellow buildings resemble an old spaghetti western. For a few nonconsecutive weeks a year, Mikey stays at home, working on the ranch and climbing locally. He converted the garage into a studio apartment where he lives and rents the main house and a small back cabin.
“I assume I’ll be climbing my whole life, but I guess even that is not a sure thing anymore,” says Mikey. Despite fleeting thoughts of retirement, Mikey established the hardest crack Shúshaynsh (5.13+) at Trout Creek near his home, and at Smith, he’s climbed a number of difficult 5.13+ sport routes. One of the few goals Mikey hasn’t achieved in his climbing career is to tick 5.14, an objective that would require him to stay out of the mountains, work less, and train more. Crushing that hard seems like a stretch for Mikey, especially with the commitment required. When he does climb 5.14, he can safely quit but that goal may take awhile. “It seems like I’ll probably climb the rest of my life.”
Mikey’s Fitz Roy Sky Line Tick List
● Hard Sayin' Not Knowin' (5.10 A2 70°, 550m), Aguja Guillaumet; with Kate Rutherford, January 2009
● Jardines Japoneses (5.10 A1 AI4 M5, 650m), Aguja Mermoz; with Colin Haley and Jens Holsten, December 2010
● The Washington Route (5.10 A1, 500m), Cerro Fitz Roy; with Kate Rutherford, February 2011
● Rise of the Machines (5.11 A2+, 900m [650m new]), Aguja Poincenot; with Jens Holsten and Joel Kaufman, December 2011
● Tiempo para la Playa (6c A1, 180m) Aguja Rafael Juarez; with Kate Rutherford, February 2012
● Astro Choss (6b C1 30˚, 500m), South Face of Aguja St. Exupery; with Kate Rutherford, January 2012
● Carne y Papas (5.12a A0, 300m), South Face of Aguja de l'S; with Josh Huckaby, January 2013
This article first appeared in Climbing Issue 346
Mikey has since sent 5.14, climbing Scarface at Smith Rock in May of 2018.
