Not for
Beginners

One Climber Put Up First Ascents on Nearly Every Major Wall

Layton Kor made first ascents of nearly every major wall in the Black Canyon during the 1960s, including the North Chasm View Wall, the South Chasm View Wall, and the Painted Wall itself, Colorado's tallest cliff. He used the canyon as what one account calls his "personal playground for ten years," returning again and again to routes nobody else had tried.

One 1962 climb captures what that actually meant in practice. Kor and a partner, Jim Marts, set out to climb an unnamed 1,800-foot pillar below the South Rim. They started at 1 p.m., rappelled down a brush-choked gully to reach the base, and bivouacked on a ledge partway up. Rain caught them the next morning, soaking Kor through as he climbed, water running down into his boots. He pushed the last pitch after dark, aiding up a bushy groove toward the rim with a flashlight held in his mouth to see the rock. The batteries burned out before he topped out. He finished anyway. Then he drove straight back to Boulder, nearly falling asleep at the wheel, because he had ordinary work waiting for him Monday morning.

The Park's Own Warning: Be Prepared to Rescue Yourself

Black Canyon now has 145 documented climbing routes, and the difficulty skews hard: only eight are rated a relatively approachable 5.8, while the other 117 run from 5.10 up to 5.13. "Maiden Voyage" is the most climbed route in the canyon, the closest thing here to a starter line, though even it demands real multi-pitch trad experience. The National Park Service's own guidance is blunt about the rest: the loose rock is extreme, route ratings can be deceiving, and climbers should "be prepared for self-rescue," since any actual rescue is, in the park's words, extremely technical in nature. Wilderness permits are required for climbing, and the park enforces a clean-climbing ethic, removable gear only, cams, nuts, and slings rather than anything left behind, with new permanent fixed anchors requiring preapproval. Peak climbing season runs mid-April through early June and again mid-September through early November.

What "extremely technical" rescue looks like in practice showed up on September 11, 2023, when a climber fell on the Great White Wall route on the North Rim. A 911 call came in around 10:30 a.m.; the operation didn't end until the patient was airlifted out just before 7:30 that evening. Black Canyon Search and Rescue, a team from Western Colorado University, and a Colorado Army National Guard helicopter were all involved. To reach the injured climber, rescuers first descended the Long Draw route, a punishing mile-long hike dropping 1,800 feet into the canyon, then climbed 300 feet back up the rock to where the patient was stranded, in a part of the park with little to no cell service. The park's statement afterward repeated the same line it gives every climbing season: this is serious, it requires training and preparation, and it is not for beginners.

Route counts, ratings, permit and clean-climbing requirements, and the self-rescue warning checked against the National Park Service's official climbing page for Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Layton Kor's first ascents and the 1962 climb checked against a published account of his Black Canyon climbing history. The September 2023 Great White Wall rescue checked against the park's own news release on the incident.

Sixty years apart, the two stories rhyme more than they differ. Kor finished his climb with a dead flashlight and no one coming to help if it had gone wrong. A rescue team in 2023 had a helicopter and a whole search-and-rescue apparatus, and it still took nine hours and a mile-long hike into the canyon before anyone reached the person who needed it. The walls haven't gotten any less loose, any less tall, or any less indifferent to who's on them. That's the actual pitch the park is making when it tells you, plainly, to be ready to get yourself out.