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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Apr 13, 2019 - 05:21pm PT
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Sadly, I could make a list longer than Roy (although over a dozen names would be on both)
I lost ten friends in four and a half months, and the last two, Craig and Kyle, devastated me.
(Roy's list has Kyle in '05, but it was '09)
But few indeed who don't climb ever know the magnificence of a sunrise nobody else gets to see as you do, or the exultation of successfully upping your limit, or the trust of a partner who has caught you many times, or the sheer joy and wonder of exploring places where nobody has been before.
No, I don't regret climbing, nor even not keeping a journal.
I doubt human civilization will be able to survive its own flatus and greed, so why NOT go out as one of the "conquistadors of the useless"?
EDIT
I know of 5 people dying on my routes, but never my fault.
It would trouble me if an anchor I placed failed but, some of them are over forty now, and most are still good.
Its climbing; caveat emptor
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perswig
climber
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Apr 13, 2019 - 05:39pm PT
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Pictures
Doing more when I still could
Yes.
I started late, stayed mediocre, enjoyed it immensely, and miss it mildly-to-intensely, depending.
Dale
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 13, 2019 - 06:19pm PT
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I regret going climbing.
I should have become a WalMart greeter.
I'd be the best greeter ever.
No one can greet better than me.
"Welcome to WalMart st00pid Americans and come on in and fill your cart with all our wonderful useless sh!t in our store"
They would make me the standard by which all WalMart greeters would go by.
I'd be rich and could afford the best TV screen there is in Best Buy.
I'd become expert educated by all the great TV shows on those TV's, hundreds of channels.
I would know everything.
I would be the best expert ever ....
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Steve Grossman
Trad climber
Seattle, WA
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Apr 13, 2019 - 06:29pm PT
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Werner man you could have left Yosemite and spent your days hanging out with your Hare Krishna brothers but you chose to stay and save lives instead which is as it should be. The climbing was just a means to a glorious end...You are rich, my friend, and well beyond self-irony.
Kris- I feel your pain at not having taken the time to record the flow of it all. As a historian now, nothing is more valuable in looking at a climbing life except a really good memory during an interview.
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L
climber
Just livin' the dream
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Apr 13, 2019 - 06:43pm PT
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But the universe was kept in balance by my wife, who moved to Missouri probably about the time you left it
Ghost, I left Misery in '82 for the Great White North (Alaska). Except for some repelling off the limestone cliffs of the local rivers, I never climbed in MO and never saw anyone climbing back then. It just wasn't done.
It's changed dramatically since those days, of course--the perversions of the West/East Coasts having slowly eroded the moral fortitude of the Bible Thumpers--and now there are even climbing gyms in St. Louie!
But back when I was incarcerated there, I'm fairly certain "climbers" would've been lynched, or tarred and feathered, or both, had they dared to defile those sacred piles of Misery stones. Because they would've scared the cows and trampled the corn, y'know.
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throwpie
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Apr 13, 2019 - 07:06pm PT
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My biggest regret is never doing Werner’s Wiggle. That, and El Cap. But El Cap always seemed like more work than fun.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Apr 13, 2019 - 07:41pm PT
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Thanks for correcting the date on Kyle, Ron.
(My voice control typing program often hears five as nine –and so forth.)
By my lights, and speaking to no one in particular here: it's important not to regret the loss of loved ones, but to recognize who they are, as they exist within us, as an exertional force, much more so than reminiscing upon who they were. Our persistence beyond them is fleeting, if even that.
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Trump
climber
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Apr 13, 2019 - 08:21pm PT
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Shoot I’m sorry some of us are feeling like we need to spend some of our time in the present regretting things in our past, rather than spending that time doing something we’d prefer to do in the present.
But if we find that we can’t not have regrets - that we can’t use our time more to our liking right now in the present, then maybe we couldn’t have changed what we were doing in the past either? I think that if we’re spending time in the present regretting our past, if we had had different pasts, we’d probably just have different regrets. I’m not that good at predicting the future that’s actually going to be the future of my present, and I’m probably even worse at predicting the future of a hypothetical retrospective past.
Hope that we don’t need to spend time in the future regretting the time we spent in our present (our future’s past) regretting what we did in our further past.
Best to y’all in the present!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 13, 2019 - 08:52pm PT
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ksolem: . . . the regret was not a personal one, . . . .
It should have been. You know better. All regret is personal.
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d-know
Trad climber
electric lady land
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Apr 13, 2019 - 09:00pm PT
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My regret is that I didn't
do more barefoot.
Got in a few good ones
but it's not over
yet.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 13, 2019 - 09:06pm PT
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L: "I never climbed in MO and never saw anyone climbing back then. It just wasn't done."
I did a little climbing in MO in the mid 1960s when I lived in Murray, KY. Also in S. Illinois and Western KY. No one seemed to care.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Apr 14, 2019 - 12:00am PT
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jogill wrote: I did a little climbing in MO in the mid 1960s when I lived in Murray, KY. Also in S. Illinois and Western KY. No one seemed to care.
Yep, should have come down to the hollers in Southern Illinois. We started in the mid '70s in John's wake and got to do FA after FA of wonderful climbing.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Apr 14, 2019 - 03:27am PT
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Regret ever buying the places in Frozendale at all.
Wish I'd Bet on the other horses in the race.
Wish I'd Tied in with more of the younger crew
but Never taken pudgeknuckls under my wing.
Given D.Grifiths floor space.
Placed my own bolted anchors @ the very least,
its a shjzshow now.
I sure do regret going up right- instead of off left
So going splatt on the Carriage Road at uberfall
At the Height of my power; 2 days after sending
my 1 5.13 crack, soon downrated to .12d, it's a crack...
crushing one heel
cracking the other.
(& whatever fall broke my neck)
And going splatt again
Slipping off an ice climb
decades later
 led to my having to learn how to log onto a computer. . .
Regret having taken over a certain University's teacher's lease
when he went to Australia,,,, I was not the recipient of the packages
... really
Hooked a man-eater or two I wished I'd thrown back
As well as hadn't And had with a client or two
I wish I had switched who for who . . .
Gone running with the Landscape Architect,
not gone running after a ride to/from the cliff
I hitched with the soon to be Mrs Raffa.
(& Not`Styd`Tschowr)
Oh if I could change more than a few things yes I would and I would have climbed farther & more too
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steveA
Trad climber
Wolfeboro, NH
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Apr 14, 2019 - 05:19am PT
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Norm Larson wrote:
"It's a great tribe and most never get to experience that brotherhood in their lives."
So true!
I only have a few minor regrets concerning specific climbs where I either didn't take a camera along, or did, and never took it out of the pack. Wish that I had snapped a few photo's of Voytech Kurtyka on the Walker Spur but we were all too busy, and Charlie Fowler, on a new route in the Wind Rivers, where I didn't take the camera that day.
The last time I climbed with Jim Donini, I didn't take the camera along, and wish that I had a picture of him leading a hard 5.10D pitch up at 12,000 feet.
The majority of the people I know are climbers, and it has been a fun ride. I'm heading out the door in an hour to get on the rock for the 1st time this year.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Apr 14, 2019 - 05:50am PT
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L, you swam with the Tubes? How can there be regrets?
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Tom Patterson
Trad climber
Seattle
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Apr 14, 2019 - 06:24am PT
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I've loved my life, and love where I am right now.
Along the way, I've lost many friends and acquaintences to climbing (not as many as Roy and others), which is always a tough pill.
I have very, very few regrets in this life. As it relates to climbing, I'd say the only real regret that I have is that I didn't do the RNWF before that section of it sloughed off. I was counting on that staying attached a bit longer...for me.
Thanks, Obama.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, Bozeman, the ocean, or ?
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Apr 14, 2019 - 10:46am PT
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Not getting enough crack climbing in before my toe got so f*#ked up with osteoarthritis that even looking at a crack sends nausea pains through my body.
Oh yeah, and that time I got some hair caught in my rappell device.
Susan
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2019 - 11:18am PT
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Shoot I’m sorry some of us are feeling like we need to spend some of our time in the present regretting things in our past, rather than spending that time doing something we’d prefer to do in the present.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
It should have been. You know better. All regret is personal.
You left out the second half, “not something like survivor’s guilt.”
Some regrets are more deeply personal than others.
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Apr 14, 2019 - 04:09pm PT
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We were climbing in Alaska when two members of our climbing team were killed. Another suffered serious injuries, but he survived with severe permanent disabilities.
I was pretty young at the time, only 19. I was the youngest on the team. I suffered badly from survivor's guilt, didn't even know that the feeling had a clinical definition. Even though I was on another part of the mountain when the accident occurred, I blamed myself. I was so distraught and guilt-ridden that I never saw him in the hospital and never contacted the survivor after he recovered.
That is, until 30 years later. A very strange set of circumstances on the other side of the world in China, and a chance meeting between between two of my old climbing buddies, set into motion a 30-year reunion of the surviving members of the climbing team.
I met the survivor. I met the grown daughter of one of the dead climbers, who was in her mother's womb when her father died.
The survivor cried and hugged me. He didn't blame me, he thanked me for helping with his rescue.
Thirty years of horrible guilt evaporated.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2019 - 05:40pm PT
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That's a hell of a thing, SLR. Wow.
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