The Fossil
Hunter’s Daughter
Paleontologist Richard Mace was unaware that someone had followed him to his dig site, nor did he know they were watching him with a spotting scope in the valley below the Swiss mountain of Monte Rosa.
Three weeks earlier, Mace’s daughter, Cristina, returned from a climb on Monte Rosa in the Swiss Alps with a cellphone photo of a large fossil she had found in a rock stratum at an elevation of 3600 feet on the 15,203-foot mountain.
Cristina, a 24-year-old yoga instructor and climbing guide, came from Mace, West Virginia. Her family had roots in this quaint mountain town dating back to 1906, when her great-grandfather was the first postmaster.
Cristina’s mother, Maria, was a professor of ethics at Marshall University and tragically died in a plane crash when Cristina was nineteen. Maria had doted on her daughter and demanded that she get a good education and take ballet. The strength and balance of performance dance would come in handy in just a few years.
In her early teens, Thomas would often take Cristina to nearby Seneca Rocks to hike up a trail to the base of the steep rock. Afterward, they would search for fossils in Seneca Creek when the water was low.
She knew, on her very first visit to this beautiful rock formation, that when she saw all the young rock climbers ascending its vertical face, she wanted to climb it too. Little did she know then that rock climbing would lead to mountain climbing and become not only her passion but also her profession.
For her sixteenth birthday gift, Cristina’s father signed her up for rock climbing lessons at the Gendarme, the iconic climbing shop located at the base of Seneca Rocks. Cristina was overjoyed and hugged her father with all her might, saying with a smile, “Well, this beats a bracelet or new sweater by a long mile.”
While Christina was climbing with a guide from the Gendarme, her father would set up a lawn chair in the meadow at the foot of the massive 900-foot wall of Tuscarora quartzite, where he could watch her progress through his birding binoculars.
When tourists would walk by, he would proudly declare, “See that girl up there on the rock; she’s my daughter.” Invariably, they would say something like “Oh my, aren’t you afraid she will fall?” To which he would reply, “Not my girl, she’s strong and balanced, adding, ‘like a ballerina.”
It wasn’t long before Cristina was climbing harder and harder routes. Thomas knew nothing about climbing ratings, so after a few months of training, she came back down from a route one afternoon and told her father she had just led a 5.12 route. She had to explain the Yosemite Decimal System to him. He realized right then and there that now the child was teaching the parent. He couldn’t have been more impressed with her climbing skills.
One Saturday morning, when they arrived at Seneca with Cristina’s newly purchased climbing gear, she asked her father if he would like to try climbing, saying, “You may need to climb to find fossils someday.”
Thomas, fit as a fiddle at 56 years old, cleared his throat and said, “Not a 5.12, right?” He looked very relieved when she answered, “No, Dad, we’re going up Old Lady’s Route, it’s only a 5.2 route.” He sighed with relief and said, “Let’s go, girl.”
Her father’s illustrious career as a paleontologist required extensive travel, and Cristina often accompanied him on his fossil-hunting expeditions. In doing so, she learned to identify many fossils, including the rare ones.
Eight years later, Cristina accompanied her father on a fossil-hunting expedition in Switzerland, by invitation from the Paleontology department at the University of Zurich.
Thomas would be working with a team of student paleontologists on a wooded 4,000’ mountain rich in Triassic-period fossils. The mountain’s historic name is Monte San Giorgio, although it is often called Dinosaur Mountain because of the many partial fossils of Ichthyosaurs and Plateosaurus found there.
Cristina was excited, not just to spend time with her father abroad, but for the opportunity to climb in the Swiss Alps. Shortly after arriving in Switzerland, Cristina decided to climb Monte Rosa, a mountain known for its glaciers and located about an hour’s drive from the bed and breakfast the university had arranged for them.
Thomas headed out at daybreak on foot to join his colleagues at a nearby trailhead at the base of Monte San Giorgio. Cristina loaded up her climbing pack and drove the rental car to a climber’s access point for the mountain. A three-mile hike brought her to a stone climber’s hut at the base of a scree slope.
Sitting on the threshold of the hut door was a young climber putting on his boots. He looked up from his task and gazed up at the tall and stunning woman standing in front of him. He said nothing, so Cristina asked in German, “Sprichst du Eng- lisch?”
“Oh, oh, why yes, I do speak English,” he said shyly, adding, “And, are you American?” Cristina held out her hand, “Yes,” she replied, “I’m Cristina Mace, and if you don’t have a climbing partner, you’re welcome to join me.”
The young man, who introduced himself as Luca Keller, replied, “Sure, that would be wonderful, but you should know I am a neophyte climber. I joined the Swiss Alpine Club just a few months ago; most of my experience has been in climbing gyms at the University.”
“If you can competently belay, we’re in business, because I will lead the entire route.” With that, the two climbers started hiking up the scree slope to the base of a sheer wall approximately 400 feet high. There was a narrow goat trail that followed the base of the wall.
Cristina removed her pack and walked along the trail with Luca following like a child. She stopped frequently to gaze up the sheer face of granite, searching for a potential route. In short order, they came upon a crack wide enough to chimney up to a ledge about 300 feet above them. There was no climbing guidebook for the area, so they would have to get up to the ledge and determine their next moves from there.
As the two walked back to get Cristina’s pack, she asked Luca if he had ever chimneyed before. Luca said he had not, but that he knew what it was. He looked strong and willing, so she said, “OK, just watch me and do what I do. I’m leading, so you will have a top rope above you. If you do fall, you won’t go far; you’ll just have to try it again.”
They put on their gear, tied into the rope, and Cristina stepped back into the large crack. She placed her back against one wall of the chimney, firmly pressing her legs against the opposite wall, and began the ascent by pushing down with her palms and moving her legs in unison with her upper body as it ascended.
Cristina noted that Luca had tied himself off properly and was quite good at belying her; he seemed to know just when and how much rope to play out. She thought, “I guess you can learn some things in a climbing gym.”
As Cristina ascended the chimney, she occasionally stopped to place protection in horizontal cracks, mostly using spring-loaded camming devices. It was smooth going, and before she ran out of rope, she stopped and set up a belay to bring Luca up.
When she saw that Luca had untied from his anchor and stepped up to the chimney, she pulled the rope tight and shouted, “Luca, I’m on belay.”
He shouted back that he was climbing, and he did just what he had seen Cristina do, slipping only once on his first try. After that, he moved quite quickly up to the end of the first pitch. Cristina thought to herself, “This fellow has potential.”
They repeated this climbing technique until they could step out of the chimney and onto the ledge they had spotted from the ground. The ledge at this point was a couple of feet wide, but Cristina could see that it narrowed somewhat as they progressed. The ledge petered out altogether about 30 feet from the ridge they were headed for.
Cristina noticed a narrow, jagged crack running up the granite face that ran out about 150 feet above them. Luca saw where Cristina was gazing and asked, “What do we do now?”
“Have you ever heard of a pendulum traverse?” she asked Luca. As with the chimney-climbing technique, he said he had never set up such a traverse himself, but had seen it on climbing films about El Capitan in Yosemite and the North Face of the Eiger.
“Great, I’ll climb the crack to its end and anchor one of our ropes for the traverse. Once I set up the rope, I’ll rappel back down to the ledge.” And, off she went up the crack, which turned out to be easier than she thought.
Forty minutes later, she was back on the ledge with Luca. “What now?” he said. Cristina told Luca he would have to walk back the ledge about 40 feet so he wouldn’t be in the way of her swing. Then she began running back and forth, sitting in her harness and pushing off the rock with her feet until her swinging arc brought her to the ridge, where she reached out and grabbed a hold.
Once she was secure, Cristina released the rope so that Luca could tie in and repeat what he had seen her do to get to the ridge.
The next half hour went like clockwork. If Luca had been watching her closely during her pendulum, he would have seen a broad smile on her face, for this was one deeply thrilling climbing technique.
When Luca, shouting “Yahoo,” during his entire swing, arrived at the ridge, Cristina tied off the pendulum rope; they would need it if they had to retreat. Once Luca was secure, Cristina fished a small-diameter 100’ tagline rope out of her pack, in case they had to go back across the pendulum traverse to get off the mountain.
As they climbed the relatively easy ridge, Cristina noticed that the rock was no longer granite but sedimentary rock, suggesting the possibility of fossils.
They climbed until they came to a steep face no more than 20 feet high. Luka set up a belay, and Cristina carefully ascended the rock using the few holds she could find. When she got to the top, she pulled herself up onto a spacious ledge and shouted down to Luca, “It’s not a long climb, but the holds are scarce but solid; I’d say no harder than a 5.8 though.”
Luca made the climb look easy, and Cristina remarked, “You’re doing great for someone who has never climbed outside of a gym; I’m impressed.” Luca had an ear-to-ear grin and thanked her profusely; she had broken through his shyness.
They were nowhere near the summit, and it was mid-afternoon. But before they descended the same route they had come up, Cristina wanted to follow the sedimentary stratum a short way. Luca stayed behind to set up a rappel.
Cristina came to a bulge in the rock, which narrowed the ledge a bit. On the other side of the bulge, she looked up and saw something that stopped her dead in her tracks. A fully intact fossil of a stegosaurus that she estimated was at least 20 feet in length. She called for Luca to come and see her find. He first stared at the giant creature, then at Cristina, and shouted, “Awesome.”
Her father had found partial fossils of this creature that lived 150 million years ago, but nothing like this. She hurriedly took some photos of the massive fossil, and then the two climbed down the mountain the way they had ascended it without incident.
Once back at their cars, they exchanged contact information and made plans to climb again and, hopefully, reach the summit. Cristina headed back to the B&B, excited to show her father the pictures, and Luca headed off in the other direction.
Cristina realized on her drive home that she should have asked Luca not to mention their find to anyone. There was no cellphone signal, so she couldn’t call him from the car. It completely slipped her mind when she got back to their B&B, and the elation her father expressed when he saw Cristina’s photos.
Cristina’s failure to warn Luca not to discuss their find with anyone would prove a huge mistake, posing a grave danger to her and her father.
To be continued.
Author’s Note: On July 17, 2024, several news services, including Forbes and CNBC, reported the sale by Sotheby’s of a fully intact Stegosaurus fossil for $ 44.6 million.
Ken Springer
ken1949bongo@gmail.com
