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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Oct 23, 2017 - 06:46am PT
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Pam, thanks for sharing your thoughts. We need more wisdom and insight like yours.
BAd
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 23, 2017 - 06:46am PT
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The people that go via climbing at least tend to be embracing and affirming life.
This is such horseshit and a total insult towards all of the humanity .......
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Nuglet
Trad climber
Orange Murica!
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Oct 23, 2017 - 07:15am PT
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the question in my mind is:
why isn't the collective of climbers enough to help an individual deal with grief?
Hayden, by any objective criteria, 'lived the life'. sponsorships, born into climbing in Carbondale, well above average climber, thousands of powder days, alpine expeditions...
yet, all these experiences with all these people, and he didn't have anyone to call in his grief?
conversely, a young male black in Chicago is highly likely to lose loved ones or their own lives on a regular basis. Yet, these impoverished, violent communities don't have above average rates of suicide.
sounds like trouble in paradise
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phylp
Trad climber
Upland, CA
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Oct 23, 2017 - 10:09am PT
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Just checked in on this thread...
Pam, what a beautiful post. You always have such heartfelt and authentic things to say.
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Quasimodo
Trad climber
CA
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Oct 23, 2017 - 11:54am PT
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The recent tragedy in Montana has weighed heavily on me. I have followed Michael Kennedy's career since the late 70s and Haden Kennedy's in the last five years.
I started climbing in 1977. When my son was 3 years old in 1998 I took him on his first climbing trip to Pine Mountain near our home. I cherish the photos of my son in size 3 La Sportiva slippers and a chalk bag that looked so big on him he could bivy in it. I continued to take my son on trips to Joshua Tree, Red Rocks, Tuolumne, and many places along the East Side of the Sierra and in So Cal. I embraced his love of baseball, music and other pursuits but by the age of 21 he has developed into a solid motivated rock climber that can run circles around me. I jokingly told my son he never had chance, "I brainwashed you from the time you were three to love the great outdoors through rock climbing, skiing and backpacking."
I find great joy in being a climber. As I age, I love the movement of climbing more than when I was a young lad. My best climbing memories has been swapping leads with my son who is also my personal rope gun. However, every time I read or hear about an accident that causes serious injuries or death I wonder if my encouragement and mentoring was a wise choice. Any serious injury or death resulting from this voluntary pursuit seems foolhardy. I accept my own risk but have serious concerns about the unnecessary risks my son will be exposed to if he pursues a climbing life. Driving a car, bicycling, and being a pedestrian (about half of all annual 1.3 million worldwide traffic deaths are people not in cars) is statistically more dangerous than rock climbing, especially in So Cal, but those pursuits are a part of life that reasonably can't be avoided.
So here I am conflicted by my choice to encourage and mentor my son in the pursuit of climbing. I can't undo my son's passion for the sport. I can only mentor him, remind him of the dangers, and pray.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 23, 2017 - 12:19pm PT
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Flip Flop:
I wouldn't get too down on Hemingway for the quote!
(I may be remiss for my use or abuse of context, however, I don't think so, and in the end, it's just my opinion)
> The only value we have as human beings is the risks we're willing to take.
Clearly Hemingway valued risk-taking in the most visceral sense, but besides risking our lives outright, his notion can apply to many things.
There are myriad personal attributes and investments that can and do get laid to risk through our routine commitment to individual choices, such as: risking our vulnerability, emotions, relationships, education, reputation, career, and health. It all gets hung out there and laid on the line, one way or another. Risk is a part of life. Nothing risked, nothing gained. Our value and our strengths and very character are all revealed (actualized) through investment and risk, of one kind or another.
What Wendy is addressing, as I see it, is that along this continuum of risk, there arises the soul-searching question: when is it time to say, enough … enough?
That's something each of us can only answer for ourselves, and I don't believe making value judgments about one another in this regard gets us anywhere.
(Not to indicate the latter is what you are doing specifically, or personally, FF, just a general statement of my perspective)
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Oct 25, 2017 - 07:10am PT
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^^^good perspective Tarbuster, interesting with age how we step back further from those thresholds and start listening more to that little bird on our shoulder.
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Rick A
climber
Boulder, Colorado
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Oct 25, 2017 - 08:30am PT
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As Roy points out, there are risks in everything we do: emotional, physical, reputational, financial, etc.
This tragedy made me think about the risks of having children: parents willingly expand the probability that they will suffer heartbreak when they decide to have children, as they are destined to suffer vicariously for the slings and arrows that their children most certainly will endure.
Yet, that risk is the most mundane thing in the world, but it is rarely discussed.
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Charlie D.
Trad climber
Western Slope, Tahoe Sierra
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Oct 25, 2017 - 01:24pm PT
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^^^Amen Rick no doubt about it, that said parenthood can also get people to dial it back. As my wife says as I head off to the Intermountain West to ski the backcountry, "hope you're skiing with your buddies who have small children."
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Bldrjac
Ice climber
Boulder
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Oct 25, 2017 - 05:23pm PT
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Sort of along the lines of what Rick said. I think that loving in general is the most courageous act we can do, especially deciding to have children. So much can go wrong....and at the very least, in any loving partnership, SOMEONE is bound to go first! And yet, away we go, because that risk is SO much better than flatlining through life!
Pam
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yosemite 5.9
climber
santa cruz
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Oct 25, 2017 - 06:17pm PT
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Someone said that love always results in loss. I think it might have been the Queen of England speaking of Princess Diana.
"I could have missed the pain, but I'd have missed the dance"
Garth Brooks.
"It is better to have loved to climb, then to not have loved the mountains at all" William Shakespeare, maybe, if he would have been a climber.
My thoughts after climbing sporadically over thirty years? I made a couple of 5.10 moves at age 64 in September this year. Be safe. Climbing can be a joy without taking unnecessary risks. I ride dirt and street motorcycles and have parachuted a few times. Keep your ego in check. I only ride a motorcycle or climb when my mind is free of negative thoughts that can lead me to make bad decisions, including anger or the desire to impose my will on the situation. I believe that it is extremely important to have a realistic assessment of your mental outlook before you begin what might be a risky activity.
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yosemite 5.9
climber
santa cruz
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Oct 25, 2017 - 06:28pm PT
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Jaybro, I have to agree with you that climbers embrace life. Far too many people are couch potatoes. I always enjoy reading your posts.
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E
Ice climber
mogollon rim
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Oct 26, 2017 - 07:47am PT
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we climb and we die...that is how we live
the only times that i have felt happy is when i am out there on the sharp end solving something that is truly dire
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 26, 2017 - 08:58am PT
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Tell 'em, E.
I grew up around motor racing in the 60s and 70s, when Jackie Stewart noted the mortality rate for Formula One Grand Prix drivers was something like 40%.
Alpinism, for the Brits in the Himalaya around the same time was probably somewhere close?
(Stewart was also instrumental in shifting that paradigm, lobbying for trackside safety measures: it took until 1994 when Ayrton Senna died, for the engineers to really make the necessary changes to the cars themselves)
Elga Andersen:
But, what is so important about driving faster than anyone else?
Steve McQueen:
A lot of people go through life doing things badly. Racing is important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it ...it's life.
Anything that happens before or after, is just waiting. [Click to View YouTube Video]
Somewhere I read that quote was originated by some French guy from another milieu.
And McQueen was no poser. He could really drive and stuck it out there with the best.
 Macho BS you say? ( ... to each his, or her own)
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pocoloco1
Social climber
The Chihuahua Desert
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:26am PT
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Hello Roy:
New email? The old address just bounced
Thanks
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:28am PT
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^^^Taken care of. Thanks John!
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:31am PT
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I'm just in it for the mandatory zen when you hit the business of a new, scary pitch.
Loss occurs whether or not one is part of our weird rock worship.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Oct 26, 2017 - 09:09pm PT
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At least as climbers, we get to climb and experience a dimension of life most don't while we're here
The fallen would not want us to grieve, so why dwell on it?
Well said Kevin. I've never met you but find you to be a very clear thinker.
edit: the story of widows tears FA is lodged in my mind.
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dirt claud
Social climber
san diego,ca
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Oct 27, 2017 - 08:51am PT
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Not sure if this was posted here yet, but while checking out the "Evening Sends" site I came across this article I thought was really well written by Andrew Bisharat.
http://eveningsends.com/fear-and-judgement-in-risk-and-death/
Fear and Judgement in Risk and Death
Thoughts about what happens when climbers die
By Andrew Bisharat
August 11, 2017
Death visits Mount Everest each season with the reliability of a monsoon, and this year was no different. What was different was the ironic nature of the deaths on Everest in 2017. On a mountain where inexperienced climbers routinely die, it was actually the mountaineer with the most experience, skill, and talent who died first.
Ueli Steck, perhaps the best mountaineer in the world, fell on April 30 during solo acclimatization run up Nuptse, a 7,800-meter peak near Everest. Steck had originally planned on acclimatizing on the normal Everest route, but for whatever reason, he changed his plans last minute and headed to Nuptse, leaving at 4:30 a.m. Steck climbed to an altitude of 300 meters below the summit. Various climbers in the area reportedly saw Steck fall from this position, ultimately tumbling around 1,000 meters down the mountain.
The exact cause of his fall remains unknown, although the circumstances of his fall do seem odd. How could this have happened to someone like Ueli Steck?
The response to his death was largely one of deferential shock. “I had not expected that, at age 40 and with his enormous level of mountaineering experience, he would fall at this point in his career,” said Reinhold Messner in an interview. “He was someone who knew exactly what he was doing.”
It’s a haunting thing to consider that even the best among us aren’t protected from bad luck or, worse, human error. Still … luck (both good and bad) is pretty rare. And as Messner seems to be pointing out, for someone of Steck’s caliber and experience, human error seems even less likely.
We may never know what happened to Ueli Steck, high on Nuptse, but I do find it interesting to consider the disparate and often dishonest narratives that emerge in the wake of a climbing tragedy. When it comes to making sense of senseless death—and really, aren’t all climbing-related deaths “senseless” in hindsight?—what we’re “allowed” to say publicly is often very different from what we tell ourselves privately or whisper in confidence to those whom we trust.
A few weeks after Steck’s death, a strange report emerged about how a group of guided climbers, apparently on a budget commercial trip, were found dead in their tents during a period of good weather.
Before any further details had emerged, various climbers, guides, and pundits preyed on this story as if it were delicious carrion, using it to launch the usual salvos of criticism against Everest culture that date back to Into Thin Air. Mostly, folks attacked the unregulated commercialism on the mountain, as well as the inability of the climbers themselves to to honestly balance their ambitions with their skills.
The problem was, the story turned out to be bullsh#t. No one died that week on Everest, and it’s still unclear how this story made its way onto the international news wire. The story began to change. First, bodies in a tent were found, but they were subsequently presumed to be unidentified remnants of a past season. Then, it turned out maybe no bodies were found and the whole thing was perhaps just a morbid oxygen-starved hallucination.
Yet, it could have happened, which certainly helps explain the reaction to the fake news story.
“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.” Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors, wrote that beautiful sentence.
Indeed … just as there is ugliness in life there is ugliness in death, too. Just as we hold people to double standards in life, so too do we in death. “Celebrity” climbers we revere often are excused from the kind of postmortem autopsy of ambitions, skills, and decisions that others receive when they die doing the exact same sport, albeit at a lower level.
I wonder why?
Maybe that’s the wrong question, though. Maybe the question isn’t why the double-standard, but why do we feel the need to weigh in on any fellow climber’s death? Perhaps the answer is that we seem to want to give outsized meaning to someone’s life, especially when that someone is an idol. On the other hand, we also seem prone to turning the deaths of those who we don’t feel particularly connected to into opportunities to make ourselves feel better or more secure about our own life.
Who knows? I’m as guilty of all of this as everyone else. But I will say that the canonizations that take place for our best and most beloved fallen climbers often feel as dishonest as the judgments and criticisms that befall those are held to different standards.
So, with that, I leave everyone with this poem from Langston Hughes:
Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 27, 2017 - 09:02am PT
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I turned to climbing because ‘Nam ruined war for me.
It’s all about the intensity. Birdwatching is also intense,
if a little less physical and dangerous.
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