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RDB
Social climber
Great Basin
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Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 14, 2019 - 12:16pm PT
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Couple of the recent conversation got me thinking.
I always aspired to do more with less in the mtns and my own climbing. Admittedly I wasn't that good at the climbing compared to many.
I trusted my own skills enough to solo a few times close to my own capabilities with a rope. I thought I was solid or I wouldn't have been doing it.
We all know how that generally ends. But the long run outs of past generations compared to what is typically done now were without question sketchy either by lack of modern gear or by choice.
Now farther and farther away from climbing, steep skiing had me thinking and working along the same lines. Less is more for equipment. Mental and physical skill is where I wanted to excel. It is a work in progress.
Now immersed in a totally different sport, way-way more dangerous than soloing or steep skiing. With likely 10s of thousands more involved there than climbing world wide. Two recent near death injuries and the recovery can attest do the seriousness as I find myself still trying to do less with more equipment wise. My thought is the end result a better experience if you don't die trying to attain your goals. If I am honest it is likely why I am writing instead of doing today.
As I write and reread this it sounds a lot like soloing....and we all know how that eventually ends.
Curious where you see yourself today and where you were in the past on the risk taking scale of life.
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d-know
Trad climber
electric lady land
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Apr 14, 2019 - 02:30pm PT
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Ha! I'm lucky to even be alive.
In between growing up in the hood
and going to mountain sports
It's all a wonder.
Not to mention the type of work
and wreckless life style for decades.
Just lucky I guess.
Sometimes bad but mostly good.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Apr 14, 2019 - 05:15pm PT
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The first post here is a tough act to follow, since RDB & I did some climbing together in the mid-70's, culminating with an expedition to legendary Mt. Deborah in Alaska's Hayes Range. The four of us took big risks, but did not knock off anything noteworthy. As I recall, we stayed friendly, but I never climbed with RDB again.
I had thought myself somewhat bold before that expedition, but although I was willing to take some stupid risks, I also came away from the trip with a feeling that I had "used up my Alpine climbing Luck."
I resolved to do "sure-bet" alpine climbs after that. The main "sure-bets" in the next 5 years, were The West ridge of South Howser Tower, Liberty Ridge on Rainier, The Chouinard Route on the N. Face of Mt. Fay in the Canadian Rubblies, & a winter ascent of the NE Face of Mt. Colchuck in the Cascades. I made it up 3 of the sure bets, & nearly died twice in one day on Mt. Fay, due to excess caution & slowness, on the part of my climbing partner, but we did the “sure-bet” route.
Along the way I gave up waterfall climbing & although I did some very risky free-solo rock climbing in Idaho's Sawtooth Range in 1985, that does not count, since I was trying to find myself after a divorce.
So-----since then, it's been easy & safe rock climbs & very-light mountaineering. Strangely, I've always been an adrenaline-junkie & I still like taking mild-risks & scaring myself, even at age 69.
So, to rate myself, I have to confess my prime climbing years were spent in Moscow Idaho, which was a climbing backwater & even the nearby Washington State University Alpine Club, which has hosted some very good climbers, was at a low-ebb for talent.
In the mid-1970’s I rate myself a 7 on a Northwest climbing risk scale, but I was a 9.5 in Moscow.
I am currently at about 1.5 on risk-taking after having been at 3 only three years back. But hey! I led a 5.6 last summer!
Worse yet, climbing has not been the focus of my life since 1984. Mountain mineral collecting is currently where it’s at for me.
Fritz found a 1950 mountaintop quartz claim in 1999.
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JMC
climber
the land of milk and honey
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Apr 14, 2019 - 05:56pm PT
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Now immersed in a totally different sport, way-way more dangerous than soloing or steep skiing. - RDB
I had no idea that dressage was so hazardous.
For the question posed though, I have, with rare thoughts of bitterness, all but cut out the higher-consequence activities I used to enjoy, and looking for personal development (mental, physical, skillset) in other places. Two small kids, erratic schedule impacting training time: no more soloing. I stopped ice climbing 4 years ago when I recognized that I didn't spend enough time doing it to be safe on the things I wanted to do.
So it has been a move away from what were my main interests for 20 years. Slowly, then all of a sudden. What has come next has been a combination of shifting interests, and looking for something to fill the vacuum, to replace the volume of climbing I no longer do, while working towards a similar sense of mastery and contentment.
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RDB
Social climber
Great Basin
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2019 - 06:21pm PT
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Thanks Fritz. I remember a lot of that Deborah trip as, just how far out there we were for our skill set and experience. More luck than smart on my part coming away unharmed.
I find it all interesting. All it takes is one igit to run a red light for "lights out". And no question I suppose that most of us are log term adrenaline-endorphin junkies still looking for the next fix. I know I am. Much as I'd like to think other wise.
I don't get the same feeling of 200 foot ice leads with 4 or 5 pieces in, as I do with the same lead laced up with 10 screws as it more typical of the young ones I have climbed with more recently. Or the bolted routes that went from 5 bolts in 100 feet to 10 or 12 bolts in the same distance.
I'm not getting this out very well. But it isn't an ethics issue to me. Even though it was at one time. No problem, place what ever pro you like :) But my question is the climb a "safe bet" from the pro or is it "mental control" that makes it a safe bet.
How do we define the "safe bet" today?
I've never been afraid to put on a pair of crampons and solo something. Not a climbing injury, but after a broken pelvis and year's worth of rehab and seeing the same thing happen to my partner the previous year I now know real fear.
Long term disability after 60 is not a welcomed experience.
Even the end result of treatment and recovery from stage 4 cancer didn't put that kind of fear into my soul and makes me question what I do so carefully now.
I find it very humbling trying to walk across the rehab facility's floor heel to toe working on my balance. Knowing full well if I can't walk heel to toe and past a sobriety test I have no business putting on a pair of crampons.
Funny part, and a karma's tease I guess, is it is hard to walk at times but skiing hasn't been effected much.
But as they say, "gotta get back in the saddle"....now that scares me. Curious as to what others have done/do now.
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RDB
Social climber
Great Basin
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2019 - 06:34pm PT
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Thanks JMC.
Yes, surprising to most of us, equestrian sports are typically listed right at the top of dangerous sports that will kill or maim you.
Makes sense when you think about it, a 1100# hunk of solid muscle with it's own mind that may or may not want to help or hurt you. I've been around horses all my life and never been hurt till recently. But I've seen plenty of bad wrecks as well. Kinda always thought it was like climbing, bad luck or ill prepared. Horses? May be not so much.
5 years on and after watching my wife get a life flight lift with a broken pelvis I still didn't think it would ever happen to me. With five young horses to ride I was naïve at best.
Seldom in the mountains have I experienced real fear. Never quit because of fear. Rethinking how I want to deal with it (fear/mortality) now.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Apr 14, 2019 - 08:26pm PT
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It's interesting the way you all talk about these experiences. I hear some significant thought about risk, control, and management as adrenaline junkies. I'm not sure everyone is that way with it ("fateful situations").
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Apr 14, 2019 - 09:08pm PT
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Curious where you see yourself today and where you were in the past on the risk taking scale of life.
I recently shared an evening in the pub with a couple of friends who are also ST posters and long-time climbers. Maybe only one of us was at the cutting edge of climbing in his prime, but we'd all lived the life and done some fairly serious sh#t.
But we're all old, or getting old, and the serious sh#t has disappeared from our lives.
Why?
Our consensus was that with age comes timidity. The extent varies from person to person, but we really couldn't think of anybody who was still dancing on the edge at age 70. Sure, some people that age are still climbing hard technically (or paddling or skiing or riding or whatever), but how many are actually pushing it out to the edge the way they did when they were younger?
All my life I'd felt that climbing was just another kind of junk, and that, once the needle went in, it would never really come out again. But now? Now there seems to be a built-in age limit. The exact number of years varies from person to person, but my sense is that there comes a time for all of us when we become seriously averse to risk. Well, the kind of risk involved in runout climbing, extreme skiing, etc.
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RDB
Social climber
Great Basin
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 14, 2019 - 10:07pm PT
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Thanks Bro. Tried to send you and doug a PM a while back. Hope you are both doing well.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Apr 15, 2019 - 07:22am PT
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MIGHT AS WELL, MIGHT AS WELL(edited4/24/19, before I was locked out)
https://thenewsrep.com/39503/history-of-airborne-rangers/
Songs that I wanted to add,
"When I Paint My Masterpiece"
-(young girls full of muscles)
"I Sleep Diagnle"
-(see the fluff in the last link)
I was coming from survivors, not meant to survive,
given life & support till the age of 10.
Then cast off left before then
and then for good
So it was For better or worse
that I started climbing
what I found was that rock was more dependable
then much of life it's self,
so cast the dice and caution to the wings of chance
but having to re-learn because I had been
taught to always let go instead of always hold on
never let go.
now these days, I'm more like a modern superhero
I'm Tony Stark; give me my Iron Man suit
~the technology ~
and I'm saving the world while tiptoeing on the edge of existence
Was a picture of a "Special Forces" AirBorn Rangers Pin:from A member of the"Spiders":the proud,silent,deadly 75th)
(Wings, Parachute w/Bronze Star, A "Mustard Stain" denoting having jumped in combat_)
Replaced with the photo of comic-book "Iron Man"walking around a grocery store ~WHICH IS LAME~ BY ALL COMPARISONS
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
without the where with all to do everything at once perfectly...
I am more inclined to be found reclined, not taking it easy; just helping do my duty providing for the needs of others...
I'm lying around in bed with Gwyneth or her best friend or both of them**
"10:00am on Tuesday"
 with professional climber Sasha DiGiulian.
Her videos from around the world; living the dream.
Jordan, Cuba, etc. check them out.
There is worthy climbing in-between Lots of fluff,
mostly, but not all, hard bolt clipping.
Fun stuff
1st, the most recently posted:
Sasha DiGiulian and Molly Mitchell
travel to El Salto; a limestone littered valley
just outside of Monterrey, Mexico.
This episode includes sport climbing & the big wall,
"Samadhi"(5.13?),
First climbed by Alex Honnold and Christopher Weidner;
DiGiulian onsights this 13-pitch climb
and Mitchell has her first big wall experience.
DiGiulian climbs
"La Maquina Estricta,"
8b (5.13d);
Mitchell climbs "Dante's Inferno," 8a+ (5.13c).
Also in the video,
ATV driving, and a home-cooked local meal.
https://youtu.be/yQlZWQtBlJE
THUNDER MUSCLE, 5.14
https://youtu.be/_I7K7BOnAWs
to explain...
**If It helps to understand;
I have met Robin & Sasha
both exude What they learned from Lynn !-!
Super-cool "Humility" stoke for life
Bouldering in Mt. Evans; feat.
Robyn Erbesfield & Sasha DiGiulian**
[ Click to View YouTube Video]
given life & support until the age of 10.
Then cast off left before then
and then for good went lookin' for a brotherhood
wendy was lookin' was for it way before it
making up breaking up then there was a sisterhood
So it was For better or worse
more fun couldn't reverse
that I started climbing
what I found was that rock was more dependable
then much of life it's self,
so cast the dice and caution to the winds of chance
using wings found by chance, cordless, untethered
or tied into three ropes for redundancy
but having to re-learn because I had been
taught to always let go instead of always hold on
never let go
now
I'm Tony Stark give me my Iron man suit ~the technology ~ and I'm saving the world while tiptoeing on the edge of existence,
without the where with all to do everything at once perfectly...
I'm lying around in bed with Gwyneth or her best friend or both of them
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