14erQuest Summit 11/59, Route 9/42. Humboldt Peak. On a ridge, solo, in a whiteout with 60mph headwind, all I want to do is turn around. Every step forward is a battle. It’s psychological tug-of-war. Emotionally- this is scary, you don’t belong here, go home. Logically- you are warm, you have plenty of food and water and clothes, the wind isn’t picking you up off the ground yet, you have gps, you have backup gps, you’re fine, stay positive, keep moving upward, you got this.
-Will Seeber, on Humbolt Peak January 10th, 2017.
The start of a climb or hike begins by simply moving one of your feet, either one, it doesn’t matter, in front of the other one. I guess I could say in some cases it means turning my body sideways so that I am facing toward the outside of the car, scooching my butt to the edge of the seat and placing both feet on the ground. I am getting out of the car to begin.
The beginning of a climb can be so unassuming. A simple sign that says Kilpacker trail and next to it an interruption in the grass meadow, the path. At the end of the trail are two peaks that are over 14000 feet tall with a ridge called a traverse linking the two, where all the drama unfolds.
At 3:00 in the morning it is dark and the temperature is about 30 deg F. My teeth are chattering. I have 20 lbs in my backpack. I am wearing long johns under my hiking pants. My Goretex bycicle jacket covers my synthetic turtle neck shirt which covers my synthetic tee shirt. A winter hat covers my head. I have my head lamp on. The spot light of my head lamp lights the sign and then the barren earth interrupting the grass meadow. I lower my hiking poles held in my gloved hands to the ground. Almost without a thought I place a foot (one of mine) onto the path and start what will turn out to be an 18 hour journey up though the forest, up unstable rocky inclines, then up one mountain, over a traverse to the next mountain, down back over the rock, through the forest again in the dark, and back to the car. To be honest, the journey started when I turned the key in the ignition back in the garage at home. It is almost like that first snowflake of the first snow storm that hits the earthen rocky mountain side that will not see light until the snow has melted in the spring.
At this point in the hike it is important NOT to think about hanging by one arm lodged in a crevice between two rocks on the side of a wall four hundred feet in the air completely exposed with no ropes. Of course I don’t know that this will happen. (It did.) But I know something there is a chance of something like this happening other wise I wouldn’t do the climb in the first place. No. What is important to think about is only the path that stretches out in front of me lit by my headlamp. What is important is to concentrate on the cadence and follow the path. I will get to the “fun” part soon enough. The fun part is the real terror felt when truly faced with mortality. That “fun” can not be bought. -Too much liability for the seller. Yeah, sentence fragment, I know.
Concentrate on where I am right now. Now is not the time to be thinking about the future. I can’t do anything about it. I should have thought about the future before I went out to the garage with my wife on the phone to tell her I was going to end it all. I certainly thought about the future before I went on my climb, hence the clothing, the 20 lbs of supplies including food and water, gloves, hiking poles, and headlamp. Also, now is not the time to think about how I should have been thinking about the future before I went out to the garage to kill myself. Now is the time to be thinking about now.
As the intake guy left, closing the door behind him, I lied in that cot listening to the air handlers fill the room with warm air, listening to two other guys snoring, and staring into the blackness of night. My entire body tensed. All of my muscles contracted as if I was trying to squeeze myself back through some wormhole in time – the time before the nightmare started. “This had to be some kind of sleep paralysis thing going on.” I probablythought. It was maybe only five hours ago that I was drifting off to sleep with my three boys up in their bedroom. How the hell did this happen in only five hours? How did I get here? Apparently, I lost the route. I think there is a good chance though I was never on it to begin with.
I was sent out on the journey with no map or compass. I knew a lot about how to do a lot of stuff but had no tools to do the stuff. I heard my head say to me, “Breath. Take a look at what you got. Breath. Take inventory now. Oh yeah, and by the way if you happen to think of it, Breath.”
Breathing. Turns out it is fairly important. Breathing is the most basic thing that keeps us alive. You stop breathing you die. . . . soon. When buried in an avalanche, you don’t die of hypothermia or frost bite. You die of asphyxiation. And you die soon. Your rescuers have fifteen minutes to find you. You pass out and then you die. Kind of not a bad way to go maybe? Question mark. Breath.
I listened. I listened to the air handlers, the fans that moved the air. I listened to the motors that ran the fans. I listened to the snoring. I stared into the dark and though, “Nothing bad is happening to you. I mean really right now nothing bad is happening to you. You are warm. You have a full stomach. The cot is actually kind of comfortable. Breath.” And then I went to sleep. I actually went to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment