John Bachar solos Spider Line, Joshua Tree, 1982.

On the first day of my first visit to Joshua Tree, while waiting to climb a route on the Old Woman, a lone climber materialized and soloed this 5.11d overhanging thin crack with no apparent effort. "Do you know who that was?" someone asked. "John Bachar," he answered before anybody else could, in a reverent tone, as if we had just witnessed God himself. I was inspired, and on my next visits to Joshua Tree, I developed a solo circuit that eventually led me into the realm of 5.11. It was perfectly insane to be climbing that hard unroped, and yet it was incomparable, intoxicating, and sublime. This photo very simply captures the essence of the solo climber: intently focused, fully committed, oblivious to all else, Zen practice personified in a moment of cosmic unity of man, mind, and rock, yet nothing special. Corny? Alas, the experience of the solo climber is completely untranslatable. Perhaps Pamala White Hadas describes it best in her poem, Ringling Bros. Presents: The Lucky Lucy Lamort: it is a "loneliness, beyond all love ... a marriage of letting go and holding on, a balance of concentration and release, a deepest music undulating from my toe.” Simple, yet immense.