With that thought in mind, I clip on my climbing belt. Then I strap some small runners to it as well as a couple of carabiners and anchors. It won’t help me if I fall, but if I get stuck up there, these will get me out of a jam.
And then I start to free-climb. It’s about a thousand feet straight up a sheer rock wall. I know from experience that it will slow down at the top, but right now it’s fast going because there are plenty of handholds and crevices to grab on to.
I blow through the first pitch, not even bothering to stop and catch a breath. By the second pitch, I need to stretch out my hands, so I take a few minutes to catch my breath and give my fingers a rest. The view’s pretty awesome up here at close to seven thousand feet, and I take some extra time to soak it in. To let it soothe the turbulence churning inside of me.
My mom used to tell me all the time that it’s all about the journey, not the destination. But I tend to be an eye-on-the-prize kind of guy, whether it’s the top of a mountain or a Super Bowl ring I’m working toward. Which is why standing here on this pitch, looking out at this million-dollar view, makes me feel close to my mom in a way few things ever do.
Which is why I can’t help but give myself a few more minutes to just stand here. To just be.
But too long of a rest when you’re climbing tends to get in your head, tends to make you start doubting yourself. Tends to make you start wondering if you really can make it or if you’re just fooling yourself. It doesn’t take long before those doubts become a twisted kind of truth, a belief that you really can’t do it. That it’s crazy to even try.
I’ve never been a quitter in my life, and neither was my mom. No way I’m going to start now.
It’s that thought that gets me moving again. I remember from my last climb here that there’s a pretty sweet path up a few feet from where I am, so I carefully make my way across the pitch—which is only about ten or twelve inches wide in most places. Once I get to where I think it is, I start to climb again.
There are a lot of good handholds right off the pitch, and I make it up another hundred feet pretty quick. My shoulder is starting
to burn from the exercise—not in a dangerous, I-need-to-worry kind of way, but it’s definitely letting me know that it’s there. And cruising toward not very happy.
I’ve got another pitch about seventy feet above me and then it’s a clear climb to the top—which means at this point I’m about seven hundred fifty feet off the ground. Definitely homestretch time.
I’m in a pretty good spot right now—standing on two good footholds that are almost even, with the rock jutting out to my left far enough that I can kind of lean into it and give my shoulder a rest. But the wind is picking up, and I can’t afford to waste much time, just in case it gets worse.
Looking up, I find a handhold just a little bit out of reach, so I push onto my toes and make a grab for it with my left hand. It holds, so I use a low foothold to give me the boost I need to swing up and grab an even higher handhold. It holds, too, so I use my left hand to start searching for another place to grab. Before I can find one, though, the rock I’m holding with my right hand pulls out of the wall.
And then I’m falling, my feet searching for traction as I try desperately to find a handhold, a crevice—anything to grab on to and keep myself from plummeting off the side of this damn rock.
My left hand finally catches on the crevice I used to pull myself up a few minutes ago—about twenty feet down the rock. I grab on as tightly as I can, cursing as my feet dangle uselessly in the air. Swinging my right arm out, I manage to find another handhold and grab on.
For a second, I’m just hanging there, arms spread wide above my head and feet all the way off the rock as adrenaline rockets through me. Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
My shoulder is screaming at me now, air billowing in and out of my lungs as I try to get my breath back so I can think. Which is easier said than done when my right arm is on fire and my left hand is slicked with blood from scraping against the rocks.
Shit. I’m strong enough to hold myself for a while, so it’s not a total disaster yet, but it sure would be nice if I could find a fucking place for my fucking feet.
I scramble against the rock, searching for a foothold as I struggle to hang on with my left hand. I can feel it slipping, the blood slicking up the rock and making it nearly impossible to hold on to.
I finally find a foothold, and I slam my left foot down, digging in with my toes the best I can. Just in time, it turns out, because my hand finally slips. I dig in even harder and—shit. The rock crumbles beneath my feet and now I really am fucked. I’m dangling seven hundred feet off the ground, and the only thing keeping me from plummeting to my death is how long my injured shoulder will hold me.
Fuck me.
Desperate now, I fumble on my belt for an anchor. I manage to get a bolt unclipped and, ignoring the pain in my shoulder, I swing myself up to a crevice. Using every ounce of strength I’ve got, I punch down as hard as I can and drive the bolt deep into the crevice.
It catches, thank God, and for long seconds I do nothing but hang on and try to calm my galloping heartbeat. It takes longer than it used to, and a good minute or two goes by before I can even think about what to do next.
I finally find a solid foothold, and once I’m sure I’m not going to slide any farther down this rock, I move my hand over to grab on to the anchor. Then I pull a runner from my belt, along with a couple more anchors.
It takes a minute or two to get it set up, but once I’ve got two handholds that aren’t going to break off or crumble beneath my grip, I take a minute to stretch out my cramping shoulder. And to try to get my bearings as I look up the cliff to the top.
It’s actually harder at this point to go back down than it is to continue to the top, but I’d be lying if I said I was looking forward to the climb. Still, I can’t just hang here all day, and I’ve pretty much gotten the shit part of the climb over with, so hopefully I won’t have any more close calls before I reach the top.
It takes a couple more minutes before I’ve got my shit together enough mentally that I’m ready to try climbing again. Once I do, it goes smoothly, and I summit about twenty minutes later. It’s not until I’m on the top, looking out over what feels like the whole world, that I let myself think about what just happened.
And the fact that while I was dangling off the side of this cliff pretty much as close to death as I’ve ever come, I wasn’t thinking about my career. Or my mom and sister. Or even about dying.
I was thinking about Sage—about how much I like her and how I really don’t want to die before I see her again. For a guy who’s taken emotional detachment to an art form, that’s a hell of an admission. Who knows why it took nearly falling off a mountain for me to figure it out.