I have sent my manuscript out to a number of friends to get feedback. It’s a scary and exciting experience, though I’ve heard back from only a couple so far. I await news from the others rather anxiously — eager but also nervous about their verdicts.
One person pointed out a section where she got bogged down so I went back to look it over and figure out whether I needed it. It touches on a lot of things: why we climb, denial of danger, helping friends in times of need, talking ourselves into a belief. I get where she’s coming from in terms of the way the section diverts us from the story, it does. I just wonder if those topics need to be in there, and if so, how can I explore them more gracefully?
I am in the process of writing a profile of a longtime climber named Kim Schmitz for the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Kim is about to receive an award from the American Alpine Club for his contributions to the sport of climbing. He climbed everywhere and his list of first ascents and groundbreaking ticks is impressive even today 30 plus years after his heyday. Kim took a fall in the 1980s that shattered his body: two broken wrists, broken vertebrae and pulverized lower legs among other injuries. He has endured, and continues to endure, constant surgeries to keep him moving and help reduce his pain. And yet, Kim still climbs.
He told me that he’d recently asked Jim Bridwell, an old climbing partner of his and another well-known alpinist, if he wanted to go climbing sometime. According to Kim, Bridwell responded by saying, “I don’t have anything to prove anymore.”
That answer dumbfounded Kim. He is way past proving anything when he gets on the rock. That’s not what climbing is about for him. It’s about the places it takes him, the movement, the camaraderie, the mental and physical challenge and the joy he feels in high places. And yet, Kim has lost a great deal to climbing. His body is battered. Many of his old climbing partners are dead. Still he goes. It’s part of his soul. I don’t think he can even really articulate exactly why.
My community has also lost more than our share of men and women to the mountains. Like so many risky activities that we embrace, we talk ourselves into believing we can control the dangers of climbing. We think we can manage our ropes, make the right choices, protect ourselves until we can’t. The best of us are struck down, and those of us who survive rationalize the accident.
I remember after a friend of ours died climbing near Lander, Pete went to look at photos from the accident and hiked up to the cliff to stare at the climb where our friend fell.
“I had to see to understand,” he told me.
And so we pieced together what our friend had done wrong and figured out how we could avoid that same mistake. When another friend died the following year, we did the same thing. Why? Because we wanted to keep climbing and to do that we needed to convince ourselves it was worthwhile, which can be hard when you see the families of the dead suffering.
The dangers of rock climbing are many: rockfall, broken holds, botched rope and anchor systems, belaying errors, unarrested falls, weather, avalanches, injuries, mistakes … your own and those of your partners. All these things can kill you. After Pete died, I read one comment posted online that said climbers lived shorter lives because of the risks they willfully accept, even seek out. The commenter seemed to be saying that Pete’s death was tragic, but he should have known that tragedy was possible. It comes with the terrain.
I know rock climbing is risky, but I also believe that people who have never climbed do not understand the calculation that goes into every decision climbers make. People often assume they and other extreme athletes are thrill seekers who push themselves to dangerous limits and engage in risky, life-threatening behavior.
Part of this viewpoint dates back to a report by Marvin Zuckerman, of the University of Delaware, that came out in 1983. Zuckerman said that skydivers, hang gliders and scuba divers were similar to gamblers and drug addicts in their relentless pursuit of a thrill. He claimed this personality trait was driven by a desire to stimulate the brain’s pleasure centers — to release dopamine and get a natural high. His theory captured the public’s imagination.
But I don’t think rock climbers are thrill seekers.
Eric Brymer, from the University of Queensland in Australia, pushed back against Zuckerman’s premise that the attraction of risky activities is simply the dopamine rush of an addict. In 2013, he studied a number of extreme athletes and came to the conclusion that fear, not pleasure, was actually what separated serious extreme athletes from sensation-seeking junkies. Fear, he said, played a role in developing courage and humility. It helped athletes focus. They learned to manage fear, which in turn opened them up to a heightened sense of awareness and calm — the same traits associated with meditation.
That theory made sense to me based on the athletes I know. Pete never viewed climbing as a death-defying, thrill-seeking adventure. Like Kim Schmitz, he climbed for the flow, the meditation, the mental control, the combination of physical and emotional power. He climbed for the beautiful places the sport took him. He climbed for the partnerships, the bond that linked him to the others who tied into a rope with him.
He accepted the risks associated with climbing, but do we really understand what that means until we experience the horror of a climbing accident? Until we actually see someone die?
Pete and I managed to convince ourselves for years — even after friends of ours were killed in the mountains — that we could be safe. Now that seems so stupid, and yet, I see so many parallels to this blindness in my every day life. I guess it’s just human nature to live in the bubble of denial. The alternative seems like it would leave us curled up in our house afraid to even step through the door.