The Wayward Person

I don’t deserve to call myself a climber.

I start thinking that I am getting braver, getting better at overcoming my fear of heights, and then days like these past few happen and I find myself so crippled by fear that I cannot move or function. How many rock climbers do you know who can’t even repel down off a ledge to the bottom of an 80 foot climb?

I may need to rename this blog “The Wayward Person”.

In all seriousness, though, these past couple of days have been rough. On the first day, we hit up Eldorado Canyon, one of the most famous climbing destinations in the country. Halfway through the first pitch of the first climb, I could tell it was going to be rough. Fortunately, a friend of ours had met up to climb, so I was off the hook. I bailed after the first pitch and they spent the rest of the day climbing (thankfully, I was nearing the end of an incredibly good book and was completely content to spend the rest of the day reading).

John up on the second pitch of an Eldorado climb. He actually took a big fall from that spot, making me doubly glad I wasn’t up there to get more nervous.

Usually my nerves are worse when I am sleep-deprived, so I figured that the near 10 hours of sleep I got that night would fix things. But no dice. We went to a place called Longmont Reservoir, where most of the climbs are so close to the stream that there is nowhere for the belayer to stand. To get around this, we decided to climb up the one accessible climb, traverse along the top, and then repel down to the other ones.

The climbs at Longmont Reservoir were just across the river, some only being accessible from the top.

This plan sounded good in theory. However, the anchors for the next climb were located below the top of the ledge, meaning that I would have to lean over the edge in order to clip in and then basically fall a few feet over the edge to get a point where I am hanging from the anchors instead of above them.

It took me a while to even get up the courage to come close enough to clip in from above. I finally coaxed myself into turning around and trying to ease myself down to the anchors. However, this is where I got stuck. I had all my weight on one foot, at the height of my waist, and one hand on a boulder above the edge. I stayed stuck here, unable to move up or down for at least 5 minutes, while my leg started to shake and go numb (and it’s incredibly sore today). Eventually, I gave up. I found another way down – the neighboring climb had anchors above the lip – but still felt the sting of defeat.

I followed this up with an attempt to belay John from the top of a climb that was named the “best 12a in the state of Colorado” by multiple people posting on Mountain Project. But again, fear won out. I couldn’t bring myself to lean over the edge and look down to watch him while he climbed, so my fear cost John the opportunity to get on a great climb.

People often ask me why someone who is afraid of heights would choose to take up a sport like rock climbing. Usually, I spout out some bullshit about how the right amount of fear is a thrill – as long as I can keep that fear in check. Right now, I’m not so sure; I thought that the more I climbed the easier it would get to control that fear. Instead, it is a constant battle, and sometimes I have to remind myself that I enjoy rock climbing. Until my opinion improves, I will simply be a wayward person.

On a lighter note, John found the strangest porta-potty contents ever… a carrot?