I recently took a trip to El Potrero Chico, Mexico, for some world-class, multi-pitch sport climbing. This trip prompted me to ask what made rock climbing and other ‘extreme’ sports so unique. The simple answer is that through rock climbing, I’ve pushed myself to the limit in multiple ways that I’ve never experienced in any other activity.
Photos by Alex Stayte
When I say pushing myself to the limit, I don’t just mean being physically incapable of doing something. I’ve experienced that plenty of times in non-extreme sports. For example, most of the time I can’t dunk a basketball, and I’ve never been able to hit a home run. In climbing, I’ve certainly hit physical limits, but in my experience, climbing goes beyond the physical.
I have been challenged mentally and emotionally while climbing, in ways I’ve never experienced in other activities. When I first began climbing I was nervous that my belayer or equipment would fail, causing me to fall, but I was determined to get to the top, so I pushed through and those fears dissipated the more I got used to climbing.
Occasionally, things got a bit scarier, like when I started lead climbing. Lead climbing involves clipping the rope into bolts along the route, which requires a climber to climb above their protection in order to get to the next bolt. If a lead climber falls while above their last bolt, they fall at least double the distance they are above that lastfrom that bolt.
By the time I traveled to Mexico in January to visit Caleb McNaughton ’20, I had been climbing for about two and a half years and thought I had gotten over my fears. The 500- and 1500-foot-tall climbs in Potrero Chico Canyon quickly proved this assumption wrong. These kinds of heights presented a totally new mental and emotional challenge that the 60-90 foot Chattanooga cliffs couldn’t prepare me for.
The mental challenge consisted of concentrating on the immediate next moves and not getting distracted by the literally dizzying heights or the hawks flying beneath my feet. Another mental challenge was remembering all the procedures for tying various knots, building anchors at bolts and belaying my partner.
It was also a totally new physical challenge in that it was an endurance battle that could take us up to seven hours to complete. Although I had trained physically and knew my gear was designed to handle more force than I could even generate, the emotional battle was far from over.
Several times I had to keep myself from panicking when leading a tough pitch (rope length section of a climb) with hundreds of feet of exposure below me. It was difficult to force myself to concentrate on where I was putting my feet when every time I looked down to search for the next foothold, I could see our vehicle, which looked to be nothing more than a red speck in the riverbed below.
Once on the climb, I fell 20 feet. The rope caught me, my belayer was ready for me and I was uninjured physically, but after the adrenaline wore off, I was essentially paralyzed by fear for a moment. My instincts wouldn’t let me climb above my last piece of protection. My partner ended up having to lead that pitch for me.
I was frustrated with myself because I knew that I could climb at this difficulty. I knew mentally that the bolts were no different at this height, and knew for a fact that my gear would catch me, as I had just tested that out! Why was I scared? What was wrong?
The fact is, emotions are sometimes totally separate from reality. Feeling emotions isn’t bad. In fact, they are part of what makes us who we are. However, they shouldn’t rule us. I’ve noticed that this applies to things in other realms of life as well.
For example, in my Christian walk, although I know the theological realities of Christ’s atoning work for me on the Cross, I usually don’t respond appropriately to this knowledge. The idea that we have access to the Holy of Holies should cause us to “pray without ceasing.” Yet many of us, including myself, all of whom could correctly answer a question about this on a test, fall far short of that standard.
I believe this is due to the fact that in our fallen state, our emotions don’t always react to our mental knowledge the way they should. We must ask God to give us the joy unspeakable that we should have in light of our standing before God, and for the desire to bring our concerns to him since we have a great high priest.