At 3:20 a.m. on the first day of winter, Dec. 21, Chris Deuto left the Longs Peak trailhead aiming for the Diamond: a 900-foot wall of vertical granite on the mountain’s northeast face. “I knew it would push me to my limits, and I was curious how I’d do in that environment,” he told me over a beer eight days later. Indeed, Deuto sought an adventure that would require every skill he’d developed over his vast and varied climbing career.

More than six-and-a-half hours and 3,500 feet of elevation later, he arrived on Broadway, a large ledge 450 feet above the ground that runs horizontally beneath the Diamond proper. Just reaching Broadway via the snow-choked North Chimney proved a harrowing ascent. Deuto fought upward through chest-deep snow while his crampons scraped the rock beneath. “It was horrible,” he said. With no means of protection, he felt at times, mortally afraid. “Everything in life becomes very simple in those moments, because your whole life becomes that moment.”

Deuto reflects upon life and his climbing with uncommon maturity for a 21-year-old. Perhaps, in part, because he’s been a climber for two-thirds of his life. “Before I was a rock climber, my dad would take me up ‘Thirteeners’ (Colorado mountains 13,000-13,999 feet tall), take me out scrambling,” he said. From 8 to 17, he competed indoors regularly while also racking up mileage out on the rocks.

I first met Deuto and his longtime friend, Tanner Bauer, on Longs Peak’s summit in August 2019. They were 15 and visibly elated having just climbed the Diamond for the first time. It was around 5 p.m. — a late hour on top, and while my bivouac lay just a few hundred feet down, the two high-school sophomores faced a punishing journey back to the trailhead. Their 25-hour car-to-car climb had pushed them beyond where they’d ever been at the time, physically and mentally.

On Broadway in December, Deuto had upped the ante big time since his first — and only other — Diamond climb, more than five years earlier. He was completely alone, on a wall that had never been free-climbed in winter. Having studied recent weather forecasts, he predicted the Casual Route (5.10a) could be dry enough to climb with bare hands and rock shoes, despite sub-freezing temperatures. His vision was notably different from all other winter-free attempts, where climbers with gloved hands have used ice tools to hook the rock and worn boots and crampons on their feet.

Sure enough, the route was dry, save for the snow covering every flat edge wide enough to grab with his whole hand. Deuto self-belayed while he free-climbed slowly upward. “I knew I could climb 5.10a by myself with very, very cold hands,” he said, explaining his free climbing strategy. “But it came at a price.” He reached across the table to show me his left hand; the tip of his middle finger was black with frostbite.

Luckily, his doctor expects a full recovery by February.

Eight times throughout the climb he would lead a pitch, rappel down, ascend the rope to remove his gear, then haul a bag with crampons, ice tools, extra clothing, food and water. Despite constant cold and fear, his progress proved so motivating that, high on the wall, the discomfort he’d felt all day disappeared. For the nearly 10 hours it took for him to climb from Broadway to Table Ledge, at the top of the Casual Route, he became so immersed in the environment and the single-minded task of moving upward, nothing felt impossible. “That, to me, is freedom,” he explained.

From Table Ledge, he could have rappelled the route relatively quickly, as most climbers do in the summertime, but he chose instead to traverse left onto steep, snow-covered rock and continue climbing to the summit of Longs Peak, which he reached at 9 p.m.

A painstaking descent ensued, with wind gusts that knocked him over repeatedly above tree line. Exhausted and dehydrated, he fell asleep several times on the trail only to wake up shivering. He forced himself to keep going.

“It was exactly the experience I was looking for,” he said. “It took everything.”

Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com. Follow him on Instagram @christopherweidner and X @cweidner8.