Love Life Back: My Narrow Escape

::Blog Notice:: There's a Japanese saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight." I have fallen down and I've decided to get back up. Given the state of my health, I've come to realize that publishing two essays a week is TOO MUCH for me at this time even though I have plenty of essay ideas. So I am switching to a once a week schedule beginning today. Starting next week, I plan to publish on every Thursday when I am able.

This essay is about rock climbing and a few vocabulary words might be needed to understand the essay. (All of the following definitions were lifted off of Wikipedia a few years back. See pictures of rock climbing equipment.)

Top-rope climbing "(or Top-roping) is a style in [rock] climbing in which a rope, used for the climber's safety, runs from a belayer at the foot of a route through one or more carabiners connected to an anchor system at the top of the route and back down to the climber, usually attaching to the climber by means of a harness."    

Lead climbing "involves a lead climber attaching themselves to a length of dynamic (stretchy) climbing rope and ascending a route whilst periodically attaching protection to the face of the route and "clipping in" to it. The lead climber must have another person acting as a belayer."

Free climbing involves climbing without a rope and harness.

Belay/Belayer: "The belayer has multiple roles: holding the rope in the event of a fall, and paying out or taking up rope as the climber moves."

Rappeling “is the controlled descent down a rock face using a rope.”

One summer morning before beginning a climb at Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, my climbing partner (my ex-Y) and I selected a lead climbing route (a mapped out route on the rock face) that we thought was well suited to our skill level. Meaning, it was a climbing route that we would feel comfortable doing without a top rope. (Ropes in top-rope climbing are often tied off--that is, secured--to a tree or around a rock; something that will be able to bear the climbers weight if they fall.) In top-rope climbing you can take many more chances on the rock to improve your skill level and increase your confidence because you can more easily afford to fall off the rock face when tied off from above. Whereas in lead climbing, the lead climber places nuts into cracks and it is those nuts strategically wedged into cracks in the rock that hopefully hold the climber, and his or her belayer, if the climber falls. I suppose climbers take just as many chances in lead climbing once they develop a certain amount of confidence in their equipment, their knowledge about the type of rock they are climbing, and their ability. But for this novice lead climber, I had a ways to go before developing that level of confidence.

Of course my ex-Y and I chose to climb a rock face that juts 900 feet above the ground our first time out lead climbing. The actual "climb" up the rock face, after a rigorous hike up the steep Seneca Rocks outcropping, is only about 300 feet. That's right, prior to lead climbing Seneca Rocks, we had only done top-rope climbing together at places like Raven's Roost, which is located on the Blue Ridge Parkway and has cliffs that are 50 to 80 feet tall. You may recall from reading Knowing How to Fall and Knowing How to Fall - Part 2 that I have had this tendency to quickly escalate the difficulty level of anything I've just learned.

The point is, in retrospect, we had no business being up on that rock together lead climbing for my first time. Well, perhaps I should speak for myself because my ex-Y was a little more experienced than I was in that he had completed other climbs, including ice climbs in New Hampshire. While he was ice climbing, I was skiing and pretending that he wasn't risking his life on the ice. I had no business being up on that rock in a lead climb, as I had only been top-rope climbing a couple of times. Granted, I had been free climbing the sides of small waterfalls and the like for years and some of them would have probably been rated in the 5.0 to 5.5+ range for stretches, and while they were relatively small in comparison, a fall could have easily led to my death. (Please do not climb without climbing gear unless you are willing to accept the possible consequences. Note that there are many waterfall-related deaths because of yahoos like me who enjoyed scrambling up rocks.)

This was yet another time in my life where I had an all too familiar thought, "This is a stupid way to die." (In the last 40 years, sixteen people have died climbing Seneca Rocks.)

To give you a sense of scale from points around the U.S. and some of the globe, the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall, Big Ben is 316 feet, the Washington Monument is 555 feet, the Sydney Opera House is 600 feet, the Space Needle in Seattle is 605 feet, the Four Seasons Tower in Miami is 789 feet, the IDS tower in Minneapolis--the tallest building in that city--is 792 feet--I was scared to death riding the elevator in that building--, the Sydney Tower is 997 feet, the Eiffel Tower is 1063 feet, the Empire State Building is 1250 feet. So climbing Seneca Rocks height wise was like climbing something as tall as the Statue of Liberty (from the base of the foundation to the tip of the torch) while on top of the Sydney Opera House. (The Space Needle in Seattle, with skyscrapers as backdrop, provides perhaps better perspective.) All that to say, when you're looking around when climbing, it feels like you are very high up and you can see for quite a distance.

Half way through the climb we--my lead climber and I--got off track and ended up on a climb that was far above our skill level for lead rope climbing. If I remember correctly, we meant to climb G (a 5.4 rated climb), "Le Gourmet," which would have been within our skill level (or I should say my skill level) and would have held resonance with my ex-Y since he was the most incredible chef (an avocation of his). We ended up climbing somewhere between that route and F (a 5.7 rated climb), "Prune." Our accidental and unmapped climbing route, the last third of our climb, was a very flat relatively featureless piece of rock, and from the pictures I've seen of climbs, I believe it would qualify in the 5.10 range of climbs or possibly more for stretches of it. (Actually, having seen some pictures of Prune online, it looks like a relatively easy climb compared to the unmapped route we took that day. That said, Prune would have terrorized me on any other day given that I was a relative rope climbing novice.)

The most difficult climb mapped in this picture is A, The Tomato, a 5.8 climb.
The range of difficulty around the formation is reported to be from 5.2 to 5.13.
Climbs in the 5.0 to 5.7 range are supposed to be easy for adept climbers.
A 5.10 climb is for dedicated climbers & a 5.11 climb gets you into the expert range.

There we were, at about 200 feet, climbing sheer rock face straight up, with no sizable crags or ledges. Le Gourmet, the easier climb, was quite far away, and there was no obvious way of getting from where we were to there once we'd committed ourselves to our mistaken route. We had no choice but to face the rock face and proceed. So we climbed for another 50 to 100 feet, most often with the tiniest of holds: some only one half inch in depth and few more than 2 inches deep. (I felt like fortune was on my side when the holds were as deep as 2 inches.) To make matters worse, my lead climber was a good eight inches taller. That is, his reach was much longer than mine. This meant that a good deal of the time I couldn't make use of the holds he used. I had to find my own way within a route that made the best sense to him.  

At times, I froze on the rock, plastering myself to it. A big no, no in rock climbing generally, as it is often a sign of pretty intense fear and the effort to cling to the rock uses up a lot of energy--energy you need to, well, survive--, throws your balance off, slows you down. Besides I wasn't going to be able to belay the lead climber—that is, save him in a fall--while hugging the rock. At times, my ex-Y would have to encourage me to "push off of the rock." Pushing off the rock felt like it would be the death of me. And yet, I'd push off of the rock, and when it was my turn to climb, I’d search for a hold and take a leap of faith off my tiny perch.

Of course, you know the end of the story. We narrowly escaped an ugly ending, making it up the rock face and to the top of the out cropping safely. My fear of heights, however, was now raging, and I had to sit for a while with my face turned toward solid rock to block the stellar views. (Views that I would have immediately enjoyed had I hiked to the top.) Finally, I was coaxed to the edge to look out and take in not only the beauty of Mother Nature’s gift to the people of West Virginia but also the challenge we’d just completed.

Then, my ex-Y and two friends of ours, who had climbed a different route, told me that there was no way to hike down from the top. They said we had to rappel down the way we came up. (Which represented, for me, the longest rappel to date; about three to four times further than I had rappelled in the past. Note that one quarter of climbing deaths occur when rappelling.) I thought they were joking; they assured me they were not. At this point, I must admit I am a doer and not a reader when it comes to stuff like this and so I had no real reason to doubt them other than fear… then again, if you read Mountain Cows, Cow Pies & Asperger’s, you’d know that it doesn’t take much to fool me.

Because the way we planned to get down was a long way down, we had to hook up with other climbers to use multiple ropes for our rappel. We, my ex-Y and I and our two friends, and a bunch of strangers I did not know from Adam, made the rappel in three pitches. Meaning, we took a very long route that allowed us to rest on a good size ledge about 6 to 10 inches deep on two separate occasions while we re-positioned the belay system to secure our descent.

Throughout the entire rappel, I was so frightened that I kept loudly repeating the mantra: "This is killing me! This is killing me!” My friends thought I was simply being hysterically funny (my being funny is not unheard of) when I was in fact hysterical. Fact was, I had already tapped out my fear factor for the day. I thought my heart would fail from fright. Did I mention I'm afraid of heights, and that when you rappel, you pretty much have to look down? As it turns out, one CAN hike down from the top of Seneca Rocks.

Climbing an unmapped route on Seneca Rocks was a cakewalk compared to being debilitatingly ill with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), though I could make some apt comparisons between the two. When you get all shaky in the knee, exhausted beyond belief, and want to quit the rock, you can't. There's no way for anyone to let you down to the ground once you are up on the rock face. When you are frightened, when you doubt your ability out on the rock, it is sort of do or die. You have no other choice but to rest a bit, gather your wits about you, and find a way to dig deep; your life depends upon it. That's true about ME as well. Those of us with ME must dig deep to find the will to go on in the face of this illness. Only we face this daunting challenge 24/7 for years and years on end.

For a very long while after that climb, I kept a post card of Seneca Rocks in my office to remind me that I could do anything I set my mind to. While the Seneca Rocks postcard encouraged me to pursue my goals, I never really could do "anything" I set my mind to. I’ve always lived with illness-related physical limitations and had to find ways to work around them. Only now, my symptoms make me feel much, much older than my chronological age. Which reminds me of a line in a rock song by Little Feat: “You know that you’re over the hill when your mind makes a promise that your body can’t fill… old folks boogie.”

You won't ever catch me rock climbing again, and not just because I am over the hill or have ME. Even if I weren’t ill, I could no longer boogie up rock because I blew out my right knee getting run over by a car (a story for another time), and knees are important for rock climbing. (Sadly, I went lead climbing just one other time before blowing out my knee.) This means that a goal like climbing to the top of Seneca Rocks, perhaps even one of the more difficult mapped routes, is now and forever out of my reach.

While my knee injury may have knocked out some specific physical challenges, ME has made daily living a monumental challenge, causing me to miss out on most everything I once enjoyed, including reading and writing. I missed reading and the challenge of writing nearly as much as I missed taking a daily walk or taking on physical challenges like rock climbing. And so in June of this year, once I was able to write with some clarity again, and without so many grammatical errors, I set myself a goal of writing two essays a week. I took a leap of faith, and well, my landing has been rocky here behind the scenes.

ME can be likened to altitude sickness, and it's clear from how difficult meeting this goal has been that I need a less lofty one. I need to be less aggressive in my approach to the task of writing. So, I'm climbing down from this self-imposed perch and bringing a little balance back to my life--at least to the extent that I am able given my physical limitations.

My dream, of course, is that one day I will make a promise that my body can fill. When I close my eyes, I picture myself writing about my narrow escape from ME while learning how to windsurf off of a Greek island somewhere in the Mediterranean.