the very embodiment of Type II Fun
There is a piece of advice in this rock climbing textbook that I've been reading that, when stressing the importance of building redundancy into any apparatus that you'll use for climbing, says:
"Always keep more than one point of failure between you and the reaper. This way you have to screw up twice in order to kill yourself."
That point is hammered into us again and again by the book, and sometimes by our instructors. I say "sometimes" because our instructors are human and they are all different. This class is offered by the Appalachian Mountain Club, which told us before we even enrolled that, "the Rock Program isn't going to train you to be better climbers. You won't learn technique, and you won't build strength, aside from what you get while climbing through your practice sets. No, our goal is to teach you how to go outdoors and climb independently and not die."
It's easy, after a year of gym climbing, to get a bit complacent when it comes to safety. The equipment is setup by professionals. You are being belayed by friends that you trust explicitly, and the floors are covered in soft mats that probably won't save your spine from a 50 ft. fall, but at least feel nice and reassuring to walk on. It's a different game when you're coming up to a cliff, and trying to determine if a boulder or a tree can hold your weight, if the knot that you tied is going to hold, and if there isn't a weakness hidden somewhere in all of the gear that you've setup.
So, yes, force yourself to screw up at least twice before killing yourself.
One of my more frequent instructors in the class is The Viking, a tall, rangy Norwegian with ice blue eyes and a permanent smile. He has a natural enthusiasm for the sport that is infectious, and has a way of describing the most grueling miscalculations as some kind of fun problem to solve. He is also the kind of instructor who grabs the first batch of students who arrive at the Quarries and his crew is the last to finish, because he wants to teach you everything, even tricks that aren't on the syllabus. To go with the Viking's class is to always go for Advanced Placement and opt-in for extra credit, and is the very embodiment of Type II Fun. I can never seem to finish any of the Viking's sessions without leaving a bit of blood somewhere.
Another aspect of the class is that they train you how to deal with situations that are increasingly less than ideal. We spent one Saturday learning how to rappel, or how to throw yourself off a cliff while having fun doing it. The ideal setup for a rappel is to use a belay device clipped into your climbing harness, leaning on the metal and rope friction to control your descent. But, it's always possible, as you were climbing up to the top of the cliff, that you fumbled your belay device and wound up dropping it 200 feet to the bottom of a valley. So, here's how to jury-rig a rappel brake with four carabiners. Now practice on that. Now, let's pretend that you don't have four carabiners, so here's how to rappel using a Double Munter Hitch knot. Now try that.
Now, pretend that you don't have a climbing harness. You're out in the wilderness, a storm's coming and you need to get down fast. Here's how to take your 50 feet of rope and wrap it around your body and do an old school rappel.
The first time that I did a body rappel, I wound up tumbling off the cliff and slamming my elbow into a rock face as I scrambled to catch myself. The Viking had me on top-belay so he caught my fall, but it was still enough to shock me and make me realize that, if this was real, I probably would've died. I tried to do it again, but my nerves were too shot, and after I fell a second time, The Viking gamely said, "well, honestly, you should never hope to have to use this. It's painful and it's a very desperate self-rescue tactic." And he helped pull me up and said that I was done for the day.
Still, since then, my confidence with heights has been shaken. I'll go up to the top of a 50 foot pitch, and then clip into a pair of metal bolts anchored into the cliff face, and even if I abstractly know that the bolts will hold me and that I can trust the system, my instinct still goes into fight or flight. I do not like being here. I am not comfortable with this amount of potential danger.
… which is interesting to consider when seated and sober and away from it all. I still ride my bike in to work everyday, and I spend my mornings and evenings with trucks and buses passing within inches of me. It is easy to believe that all I need is a poorly timed car door opening, or some kind of catastrophic mechanical failure, or a driver texting at exact wrong time, and I'd be paste as well. But those premonitions do not pre-occupy me. Instead, I'm just thinking of wind, and speed, and fun.
I know that there are still many aspects of climbing that I love and enjoy: the mental satisfaction of figuring out a tough route, the sense of flow that comes from being able to move naturally through a sequence of moves, the pleasant ache of muscles and the endorphin buzz that comes from a good day spent in sweat and sun. I like to believe that if I keep doing this, that I will eventually bury the trauma of those falls underneath a mass of good memories. But I know, from my past crashes on a bike, that it will never go away; not completely.
I graduated from the class a couple of weeks ago, and on the final session, after I had passed all of my tests, I was just sitting in the grass, watching new friends finish their exams. Next to me were a couple of other volunteer instructors, Dirtbag and MrSteady, and at some point I mentioned how I had this little crisis of confidence, and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to be really comfortable doing multi-pitch ascents.
"That's good," MrSteady said, "that's the right attitude to have and you need to hold on to it."
"Really? You're always a little scared?"
"Always. But, you know, after a good day, you don't remember the fear. That fades and just the good stuff remains."
"Some people of course," Dirtbag said, "don't have good days, and that's fine and that might mean that this isn't for them. But if you don't have the fear, then eventually you'll wind up dead."
There is this journal that is published every year by the American Alpine Club that catalogs every major accident in North American climbing. It is supplemented by a maintained list of international accidents from Rock and Ice. And as far as all the instructors are concerned, if you're serious about climbing outdoors that stuff is required, if morbid, reading. "I read it when going to bed," Dirtbag said, "it's usually more educational than reading about how someone crushed some new route in Patagonia or something. All of those ascent reports start to sound the same after a while."
"So, it's like the opening bit of Anna Karenina then? Every successful ascent report is the same. Every accident is a failure in its own unique way."
"yeah, something like that."
"Always keep more than one point of failure between you and the reaper. This way you have to screw up twice in order to kill yourself."
That point is hammered into us again and again by the book, and sometimes by our instructors. I say "sometimes" because our instructors are human and they are all different. This class is offered by the Appalachian Mountain Club, which told us before we even enrolled that, "the Rock Program isn't going to train you to be better climbers. You won't learn technique, and you won't build strength, aside from what you get while climbing through your practice sets. No, our goal is to teach you how to go outdoors and climb independently and not die."
It's easy, after a year of gym climbing, to get a bit complacent when it comes to safety. The equipment is setup by professionals. You are being belayed by friends that you trust explicitly, and the floors are covered in soft mats that probably won't save your spine from a 50 ft. fall, but at least feel nice and reassuring to walk on. It's a different game when you're coming up to a cliff, and trying to determine if a boulder or a tree can hold your weight, if the knot that you tied is going to hold, and if there isn't a weakness hidden somewhere in all of the gear that you've setup.
So, yes, force yourself to screw up at least twice before killing yourself.
One of my more frequent instructors in the class is The Viking, a tall, rangy Norwegian with ice blue eyes and a permanent smile. He has a natural enthusiasm for the sport that is infectious, and has a way of describing the most grueling miscalculations as some kind of fun problem to solve. He is also the kind of instructor who grabs the first batch of students who arrive at the Quarries and his crew is the last to finish, because he wants to teach you everything, even tricks that aren't on the syllabus. To go with the Viking's class is to always go for Advanced Placement and opt-in for extra credit, and is the very embodiment of Type II Fun. I can never seem to finish any of the Viking's sessions without leaving a bit of blood somewhere.
Another aspect of the class is that they train you how to deal with situations that are increasingly less than ideal. We spent one Saturday learning how to rappel, or how to throw yourself off a cliff while having fun doing it. The ideal setup for a rappel is to use a belay device clipped into your climbing harness, leaning on the metal and rope friction to control your descent. But, it's always possible, as you were climbing up to the top of the cliff, that you fumbled your belay device and wound up dropping it 200 feet to the bottom of a valley. So, here's how to jury-rig a rappel brake with four carabiners. Now practice on that. Now, let's pretend that you don't have four carabiners, so here's how to rappel using a Double Munter Hitch knot. Now try that.
Now, pretend that you don't have a climbing harness. You're out in the wilderness, a storm's coming and you need to get down fast. Here's how to take your 50 feet of rope and wrap it around your body and do an old school rappel.
The first time that I did a body rappel, I wound up tumbling off the cliff and slamming my elbow into a rock face as I scrambled to catch myself. The Viking had me on top-belay so he caught my fall, but it was still enough to shock me and make me realize that, if this was real, I probably would've died. I tried to do it again, but my nerves were too shot, and after I fell a second time, The Viking gamely said, "well, honestly, you should never hope to have to use this. It's painful and it's a very desperate self-rescue tactic." And he helped pull me up and said that I was done for the day.
Still, since then, my confidence with heights has been shaken. I'll go up to the top of a 50 foot pitch, and then clip into a pair of metal bolts anchored into the cliff face, and even if I abstractly know that the bolts will hold me and that I can trust the system, my instinct still goes into fight or flight. I do not like being here. I am not comfortable with this amount of potential danger.
… which is interesting to consider when seated and sober and away from it all. I still ride my bike in to work everyday, and I spend my mornings and evenings with trucks and buses passing within inches of me. It is easy to believe that all I need is a poorly timed car door opening, or some kind of catastrophic mechanical failure, or a driver texting at exact wrong time, and I'd be paste as well. But those premonitions do not pre-occupy me. Instead, I'm just thinking of wind, and speed, and fun.
I know that there are still many aspects of climbing that I love and enjoy: the mental satisfaction of figuring out a tough route, the sense of flow that comes from being able to move naturally through a sequence of moves, the pleasant ache of muscles and the endorphin buzz that comes from a good day spent in sweat and sun. I like to believe that if I keep doing this, that I will eventually bury the trauma of those falls underneath a mass of good memories. But I know, from my past crashes on a bike, that it will never go away; not completely.
I graduated from the class a couple of weeks ago, and on the final session, after I had passed all of my tests, I was just sitting in the grass, watching new friends finish their exams. Next to me were a couple of other volunteer instructors, Dirtbag and MrSteady, and at some point I mentioned how I had this little crisis of confidence, and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to be really comfortable doing multi-pitch ascents.
"That's good," MrSteady said, "that's the right attitude to have and you need to hold on to it."
"Really? You're always a little scared?"
"Always. But, you know, after a good day, you don't remember the fear. That fades and just the good stuff remains."
"Some people of course," Dirtbag said, "don't have good days, and that's fine and that might mean that this isn't for them. But if you don't have the fear, then eventually you'll wind up dead."
There is this journal that is published every year by the American Alpine Club that catalogs every major accident in North American climbing. It is supplemented by a maintained list of international accidents from Rock and Ice. And as far as all the instructors are concerned, if you're serious about climbing outdoors that stuff is required, if morbid, reading. "I read it when going to bed," Dirtbag said, "it's usually more educational than reading about how someone crushed some new route in Patagonia or something. All of those ascent reports start to sound the same after a while."
"So, it's like the opening bit of Anna Karenina then? Every successful ascent report is the same. Every accident is a failure in its own unique way."
"yeah, something like that."