We climb to simplify our lives
It is 10:30 pm on a Sunday and the rain is falling, as usual. A few hours ago I got off the phone with my friend and sometimes climbing partner, Dan, who had just returned from the Alaska range and a successful bid on the very serious SW Ridge of Hunter.
I could tell by the conversation that the seriousness of his accomplishment is understood, but that the impact it will have on him, his future, and his climbing isn't quite yet. And I can understand that. Dan has come a long way and put forth alot of effort, and suffered alot of injury and humiliation in his ambition. A big route in Alaska is not a culmination of those efforts, but certainly a validation. Some of the things that we said to one another struck me as quite singular: that he repeated my last words to him before he left "Don't do anything stupid, because Alaska is for real", that we chatted idly about the vagaries of Alaska Range weather, that we now shared one more common bond as Alaska Range veterans. It sounds melodramatic, but it is very true. In Alaska you can realize your potential, and come closer to the personal truths of why we climb.
And you can do that anywhere, but large routes and big danger accelerate the awareness. Things become clear, crystal, when the only reality you have is getting up a challenge you have set forth for yourself, and getting down again safely. This is one reason we climb, to simplify our lives. We can do that here in the Cascades or anywhere, but my experience is that the longer you expose yourself to the simplicity, the more you become aware of how other things affect you once that simplicity is again masked by life's daily routines.
Waterman introduces the Southwest Ridge on Hunter as "This ridge is the safest, most straightforward route up Mt Hunter. It is a 35-to-50 degree snow and ice climb, with few cornices and little objective danger." Anyone who has climbed anything in the Alaska range knows that its all relative. Relative to Alaska, the ridge probably isn't that bad. As well, my own ascent of the SW Ridge on Crosson is even more casual than something like the SW Ridge of Hunter - its practically a ramp. But that doesnt mean that the danger is any less, that the climbing any less serious. So its easy to see why someone who has not been there might think it a pretty casual affair from the route descriptions. The reality is that these things tend to be much harder than what we bargain for, mentally and physically. Hunter's summit plateau is only 6000 feet above the galcier! In the Cascades, thats an approach, a day hike, a day trip car-to-car, something to do from a basecamp and go light. But it took Dan and Nick 5 days round trip, which by Alaskan standards is plenty fast. Dan and Nick are very fast climbers, who also went very light, and are not unused to taking risks and paying for mistakes.
As I rode laps around Seward Park in the rain on my bike, my only form of excercise this weekend, I drifted back to Alaska and thought deeply about some of the things Dan said. I like Dan because he can speak freely about fear and stupidity, and ego and ambition, and also about stuff like mowing the lawn and taking care of his daughter Shelby and the failure of realtionships and so on. We both enjoy mowing the lawn very much!
We climb to be better than our peers
I used to climb more competetively than I do now, I used to climb alot more to prove something to someone somewhere. Not that I actually climbed any better, mind you! When one of my friends would tell me about a route they had just done, I would have to go do it immediately, and, not to be outdone, I would have to do it in better style somehow. There is alot of history behind some of my early climbs and even some of the climbs I have not yet done but are still on my hit list after many years. In 1994 a guy named Derek and I tried to climb together several times. I had met him on Hood in December 1993. We never succeeded on any of our trips together. Once, we tried Early Morning Couloir. We bivied by a large rock, and basically got stormed off the mountain. A month later he called me and told me he had climbed it with some other guy. I felt betrayed that he had not waited to do our project with me, but rather had done it with some other bloke. So I upped the ante, in my own competetive way. That weekend I went and soloed the route. Not only soloed it, but night soloed it. It was a fantastic experience, because I pushed myself very hard mentally. At the time doing something like that was just plain crazy. But I proved that I was better than him, I sure showed him who the better climber was! Later that Summer we would both realize just how mismatched we were, when at 10,000 feet on the North side of Mt Hood we had a 30 minute yelling match. He threatened to untie and let me continue up alone while he went down alone. We both woke up and I went down with him. We never climbed together again. His fears had been legitimate, he was just more conservative than I.
I came upon my climbing resumee the other day. It was last updated in 1995, and I read sections of it out loud to my girlfriend Summer to amuse her and show her how shallow I was. At the time, I was trying to one-up another Bellingham climber I knew, named Carlos. Carlos and I climbed together once, when I belayed him up a 10c at Skaha, but other than that our competition was purely through the grapevine. Carlos' and I are very similar in many ways. At the time we were both young ambitious climbers and felt the need to try and sell ourselves and our stories for some reason or another. Carlos is actually a very talented rock climber, with impressive ascents over the years that include a bushwack of the North Face of Index. But Carlos and I competed alot, indirectly. I think we were both pretty sneaky about it. Whenever I would hear about a route that Carlos had done, I would go research it and see if I could knock it off in better style. Some of the things he did I just could not top - he was a better rock climber than I was, so some of his achievements I just couldn't match because of the numbers involved. But I was a better aid climber and a better ice climber, so I would always make sure that my resume highlighted my aid and ice experience.
After a few years, something fundamental happened. Carlos and I had drifted in different directions, and alot of that stuff just didnt matter anymore. Carlos wasn't even climbing anymore, really, and, well, how the hell do you compete with someone who isn't even in the game? I realized that one of my own early motivations to climb, namely, proving myself as the king of the hill amongst my peers, didnt mean shit because as your experience grows your peer group changes anyway. And its a lot harder to one-up people who are way better than you! (And there is always someone better than you.) Plus, impressing the guys didnt help much in impressing the girls - I wasnt getting any dates because of my climbing ability! So just who was I impressing? Only myself.
I am still a competetive climber, and find motivation in friendly competition with my peers. But I think I am finally over the whole one-upmanship thing; I realized that had I been open to climbing with people that were better than me in the first place, rather than competeing with them, I might have learned alot more and progressed alot faster than I did. I look back on the motivations behind some of the climbs I did and think that I should kick myself, because I am not supposed to climb for those reasons. But there it is.
We climb to relax
One of the things Dan said was that now that he had done this route, he wasn't sure if any of the routes in the Cascades would hold any challenge anymore. To many of you who might read this, it might sound like a big ego talking, and Dan has plenty of ego. But I agree with him; by my own reckoning there are only a select few routes in the Cascades that still make me pause when I think about them. Once you have spent 5 days on something as remote and serious as Mt Hunter, stuff like Rainier, even the more serious routes on Rainier, are seen, for the first time, in a different light. You know you can succeed on those routes. You know you can succeed on Sleese, on the North ridge of Stuart, on the North face of East MacMillan. The act may become less meaningful or even boring.
Why? Does it have to?
While Dan was weathering the cold and uncertain nature of the Alaska Range, Dennis and I blasted up the East ridge of Eldorado last weekend, in fantastic weather. We didn't find it particularly challenging, but is sure was a nice view! The most difficult part of the trip, to be sure, was trying to get a spare tire in Marblemount. Why did we choose this route? We were not even remotely challenged by it, so why did we climb it? Training? The Diet Plan? The truth was that Dennis and I were looking for a casual route, and were very content with Eldorado. We had lots of fun getting to high camp, chatting with some climbers there who had driven 10 hours from Pullman. The camraderie was great. It felt wonderful sitting in the sunshine and melting clean snow and re-hydrating. In fact because I have a hanging stove, it wouldnt have mattered if it had been snowing: we would have holed up in the Bibler and melted snow and had a good time anyway.
A simple truth is that we climb to relax. Not every route need be some desperate testpiece. Who cares about testpieces except people who put together climbing resumeés? When I reflect on all the routes I've done and trips I've taken, less than half of my favorite trips are trips that were really challenging. To be sure, things like my Mt Goode trips, like But, My Daddy's a Psycho, and Triple Couloirs are up there in the favorites section. But other routes that I enjoyed equally were made by the relaxing nature of the trip, or the partner that joined me. Trips like the Sitkim on Glacier Peak, the Challenger trip, Fisher Chimneys with my friend Holly, or aiding part of Town Crier with the Ritter brothers. I have had more fun on the Great Northern slab at Index than I have had on many trips! Isn't that more important than chasing numbers and names?
Not every trip needs to make it into the magazines (or onto the web site!).
We climb to introduce excitement and danger into mundane lives
I recently read a well-authored and interesting book on the 1997 Vendeé Globe, an extreme single-handed sailboat race through the Southern Ocean. Interesting because it touched on ideas that the pursuit of extreme sports may have some socialogic and physiologic causes. Something to ponder is why individuals who pursue extreme sports that involve risks at the level of something like a serious alpine climb (pick any Polish or Slovenian route in the Himalayas) or a Vendeé Globe almost invariably come from well-developed, stable "First-World" countries and societies. You don't hear about many Himalayan climbing expeditions from Kosovo or other war-torn countries.
The fact is, for most of us living in the United States and Canada, the routine is all-too-familiar: graduate high school, maybe go to college, get an engineering job, marry, kids, grow old, die. For many of us this is enough. For many of us it is not, and we seek that extra bit of spice and excitement to add meaning and life to our existance. Of course, many people have different notions of acceptable levels of risk, and what's fun and whats not. Jet skis are fun for some, mountain-biking is dangerous for some, and a natural progression occurs in some of us that leads to difficult climbing. People's attitudes change as one grows older as well. The oft-used cliché "the indesctructablilty of youth" certainly rings true, but more often than not, young people are not the people who put up the really hard shit (and survive for long). Twight certainly points out the obvious, that most interesting alpine accomplishments are executed by people who have survived that long apprenticeship, have grown wise enough to know their limits, and skilled enough to last through tremendous difficulties without resorting to luck. George Lowe instantly comes to mind. Fred Beckey does too, there's a survivor.
For those people who have real jobs and responsibilities to others who depend on them, climbing introduces a way to court danger in a highly controllable fashion - you can certainly choose your routes and what kind of risk you are willing to accept. Sport climbing is much more controlled and is much less risky than something like hard alpine climbing in the Canadian Rockies, yet many people pursue both of these facets of climbing. In approaching the threshhold of your acceptable risk, and in feeling "closer to death", you can appreciate more fully all that life has to offer. And for many of us who lead relatively routine lives, climbing and its brushes with danger can compensate for the inherent boredom of a desk job or day after day on the job site slinging a hammer.
By placing ourselves voluntarily into a dangerous situation, we are more easily able to ask ourselves some very guarded questions: " what if I were to die today? (It is certainly possible right here, right now.) Would I believe I had lived a full life? Would I be leaving people behind who depend on me, and is that a possible and an acceptable outcome of this action?" These are questions we simply cannot ask ourselves during day-today life, when you are opening your email client checking some email, or washing the dishes. There is no context. If you ask yourself whether you have lived a full life while you are at work, on the phone with a client, well, what the hell does that mean?? If you love your work, good. But we do not live to work. So what do we live for? For death? For close brushes with death that remind us we are awake and alive? People in war-torn countries do not have mundane lives, people coping with famine do not need the stimulation a gleeming, clinking 2000$ climbing rack brings. Why do you?
We climb for the top of the World
I asked Maurice why he climbed on a recent trip to Goode, while we were sitting cold and miserable on our foam pads waiting for the hail to stop and expecting lightning to ruin our day at any moment. We talked about it a little while, and both agreed that there was something magical about standing on top of a mountain will all the World laid bare at your feet, with nothing above you but sky.
As romantic as the notion seems to be, we are romantics at heart. You will seldom meet an automaton climber. There are few things as serene as the snowy world of silent evergreens blanketed by New England snow on a windless day from the summit of a New England peak. The blue hues, the grays, the color contrast between rolling blue clouds and rolling blue hills is mystical.
It must be doubly special to stand on the summit of the great peaks, knowing (dully, for lack of Oxygen) that the only people you share this altitude with are sitting somewhere far away, observing the fasten seatbelt signs and reading cheesy airline magazines while they tolerate their journey from Frankfurt to JFK. I love standing on top of Mt Hood in Oregon in the dead of winter, knowing that I can see hundreds of thousands of people from where I stand, each leading different diverging lives, yet I see no one and they can not see me.
Comments, thoughts? More as it comes to me.