The Bigotry of Low Expectations

Content warning: This essay features dozens of judgements. If you are ideologically opposed to judgement you may be offended. I have attempted to defend all judgements but, at the end of the day, these are just judgements and subject to error. My only defense is to quote Rowan Atkinson: “… in my view, the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended.”

I woke up early this morning. I thought about lying in, it was still dark, but I had lots of things to do so I made a judgement to get out of bed. After coffee, but before breakfast, I went out for my aerobic training. I judged that I was not so hungry that I could not do this brief bit of training without eating. When I got home, I did have breakfast – salad with smoked salmon and two hard boiled eggs. I judged that would be enough protein to kick start some muscle protein synthesis. This judgement I can back up with some data as my nutrition calculator informs me that my breakfast had about 31 grams of protein (all favoured animal protein) and the research literature supports the contention that about 30 grams of protein at a single meal is necessary to induce muscle protein synthesis. I had a lot of things to do, so I made a judgement about the order in which I would pursue these chores.

At this point, you must be wondering, judging if you are smart, why you are reading about the dull minutiae of my day. That is a very good question and the answer is to illustrate that there is no such thing as not making judgements. Humans make judgements all day long and we would very quickly cease to exist entirely if we suspended judgement for even a few minutes during the average day. Our lives are literally a series of judgements, some are better supported by objective data than others, but every single decision or failure to make a decision (which is making a decision by default) we make throughout the day is based on a judgement. Anyone who tells you they do not judge is engaged in one (or both) of two things: self-delusion or false-hood.

The Rescued podcast begins with this introduction: It’s about the lessons we learn about ourselves, the places we go and why, without judgement, to help us have better adventures, manage risk and deal with the unexpected; and ends with this coda: The Rescued podcast is produced on the unceded lands of the Gondungara people….”

Right away, there are two judgements book-ending the podcast which immediately negates the opening statement that the episode is presented “without judgement.” The first judgement is that learning lessons and managing risks is valuable, and the second is that land acknowledgements somehow absolve us from the responsibility of returning any unceded land that we hold back to its rightful owners. You may, or may not agree with these judgements but every listener has, within minutes of listening to any and every episode, made multiple judgements.

My judgement is that the first statement (judgement) is valid but sadly unsupported by the presenter because we can neither reflect and learn nor manage risk without making judgements. The second judgement rings hollow and I judge to be performative nonsense to appease white settler guilt unless it is accompanied by actual concrete and substantive actions such as paying a portion of your monthly salary to the Gondungara people to compensate them for the loss of their land or, even better, returning any property you own to the Gondungara people.

The reality is, of course, that Caro makes judgements on every single episode of the podcast – as do we all. Sometimes, the judgements are obvious, as when she will nod along “so good, so good” to a judgement that fits her preferred narrative, other times the judgement is buried in the exhortation to “not judge.” But every non-judgement is simply a judgement by default (much like not making a decision is actually making a decision). And the default judgement is that the guest(s) is (are) too emotionally fragile or intellectually incompetent to reflect on their experience or to learn any lessons. The guests, and by extension, every listener to the podcast, is stuck now in the trap of continuing to make mistakes, have accidents (some extremely serious) for the rest of their lives because if we were to make a judgement that, for example, suspect anchors should be backed up before abseiling, we are guilty of the ultimate crime against humanity: judgement. Personally, I judge this to be a depressing world view wherein we are all stuck in a never ending cycle of unpleasant or outright dangerous consequences of events which we are completely unable to control. If we accept this judgement, we must also confront the fact that we are both very, very stupid and very, very emotionally fragile. None of these conclusions are appealing.

The act of “non-judgement” is both the bigotry of low expectations and the imbuing of a moral value label to a non-moral act of cognition. If you look judgement up in the dictionary you will find three definitions:

The cognitive process of reaching a decision or drawing conclusions;

The determination by a court of competent jurisdiction on matters submitted to it (law);

The mental ability to understand and discriminate between relations.

None of these definitions imply or specifically explicate a moral opinion. We can, and do, judge all the time without adding moral dimensions of good and bad to our judgements, although most, if not all, of us are able to recognise the differences between outcomes, some of which are most definitely good or bad. Breaking your pelvis I judge to be extremely bad and, my personal judgement is, that if there are actions I can take which will avoid this complication I will most certainly take them.

Caro’s podcast is, of course, a derivative of Ashley Sharpe’s very popular Sharp End podcast, which is itself a derivative (all work is derivative) of “Accidents in North American Mountaineering” published annually by the American Alpine Club. The annual volume of accidents (a selection only) has always included an editorial judgement as to the contributing causes of the accidents. This is because the editors are climbers (often very high level climbers) who understand that when you play risky games you might take home unwanted prizes if you do not use judgement, wisdom and intelligence to manage risk.

The difference between the two podcasts is stark. The epilogue of every single episode of the Sharp End podcast includes the lessons learned. In fact, the entire podcast is structured around the concept of learning from the mistakes of others so that the listeners do not have to make the same mistakes themselves. These lessons are most often advanced by the guests themselves although Ashley will also note lessons learned. Many times, I have thought that the real lessons to be learnt have been missed but that is a relatively unimportant detail when compared to Sharpe’s staunch adherence to the concept that accidents can be prevented by better knowledge and judgements. Ironically, the Rescued podcast with it’s exhortation to make no judgements, encourages us to become the podcast equivalent of accident voyeurs without redeeming qualities. We become the ghouls (a judgement) who slow down to stare at accident sites without offering to help. Gawking spectators to the tragedies of others with no moral constraints, but at least we aren’t judging.

I don’t believe (but I could be wrong) that Caro is truly committed to non-judgement – an impossible state of affairs – she simply suffers from the intellectual and moral confusion which comes from identifying strongly with certain ideologies. Anytime we adopt an ideology we abandon reasoned thinking and allow our ideological beliefs to make our judgements for us. I am reminded of the quote attributed to G. K. Chesterton: When men choose not to believe in God, they do not hereafter believe in nothing, they become capable of believing in anything. If we are forced to suspend judgement we become both morally vacuous and intellectually stupid, a state of affairs which we should judge to be abhorrent.

Spring Training

In Alberta, the tanned face and neck with white body is called the “farmers tan.” I’ve come back from north Queensland with the equivalent: tanned fingers from the knuckles down and white hands from wearing paddling gloves for two weeks on the water. Driving through the small towns of country Australia you realise how disconnected from reality the Hannah Ferguson’s of the world are. Out in the dusty hot unforgiving Australian bush, it’s the men who drive the monster road trains, rustle the cattle, and extract the resources that allow the women (and men) of the far left to indulge their fantasies of men becoming women and Australia not generating income from resource extraction. All these towns, including much of our agricultural production would wither and die without resource extraction which is all that allows Cheek media to market mass produced tote bags and ball caps to fund endless quasi-moral proselytising while living comfortable lives in inner city Sydney advocating for the working class who they have never met and wouldn’t like if they had.

It is really another world in small town Australia. But, back in my world, it’s time to shuffle up the training program to get ready for my next big trip. I’ve got five months and my new schedule starts now. As my next long trip will involve big vertical gains, I’m back on one of the Training For The New Alpinism plans. Consistency and gradual increases in duration and intensity might test my patience but I’m an old lady with a history of tweaks and injuries and the most important goal of training is to be able to keep training.

Ignorance and Confidence

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. Mark Twain.

Back in the days of industrial trail breaking in the West Kootenays, I had a good ski buddy who loved to break trail the way a Collie likes herding sheep. In other words, it was bred into him with strong legs, a big heart (in both a physical and spiritual sense) and a boundless work capacity. The only two things that held him back from the ranks of god-like trail breakers was a tendency to get geographically misplaced and a propensity to miss rather obvious terrain management cues. This meant he could break trail for hours at a time and build fabulous gradually ascending trails that even the most infirm in the group could follow but they might be up the guts of an avalanche gully with a looming cornice overhead and the entire group stacked up so that an avalanche would take everyone out all at the same time.

My strategy for managing this, because everyone hates a nag even if they pretend to be OK with you blowing the whistle for the 45^th time on a three hour sea kayak tour, was to ignore any and all crazy foibles unless there was identifiable risk. Not imaginary discomfort from your “lived experience” but actual risk to the ski party, such as ascending steep convex terrain when shallow angle terrain was available, or going 180 degrees in the wrong direction (sometimes both at the same time).

This remains where I fall on the continuum of legitimate criticisms on shared trips. If I’ve made poor decisions such that I have endangered people, you should definitely raise the issue with me. We may not reach agreement, as people often choose a risky option over a safe one because we value outcomes and experience differently. But, if my decision is based on some kind of hare-brained over-confidence and encompasses a paternalistic (or maternalistic) “I will take responsibility for X,” attitude – especially where X is too inexperienced or inept to make a rational judgement and is simply trusting me (or you) blindly – those decisions are absolutely fair game for an open and reasoned discussion (or debrief, as the terminology runs). If I am angry about this, I am a delusional fool and you are right to mistrust me until I prove otherwise.

PC: Mark P

This system can work, although it may be uncomfortable to confront your own errors of judgement or lack of skill. What doesn’t work is pretending to forget (even if you do forgive) dozens of trips where poor judgement had real consequences. Medical emergencies aside, if you need professional rescue multiple times in your outdoor adventure career, you have a judgement problem. It was Mark Twain, the famous satirist and novelist, who wrote “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience is the result of bad judgement.” Twain, of course, wrote from his own experience of declaring bankruptcy in 1894 after a series of bad investments. By 1898 however, Twain through hard work, help from friends and associates, and not making the same mistakes multiple times, had paid his debts off and amassed a significant estate. Twain died a wealthy man. If the “first casualty of war is truth,” trust is the first thing lost when arrogance and hubris prevents accurate assessments of decision errors.

Connections

The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun. Jeff Lowe.

This year’s Accidents in North American Mountaineering is out at a record 144 pages as climbing accident reporting rises again. Pete Takeda who edits the annual volume speaks about the 2026 issue on the American Alpine Club podcast and reports that there has been an increase in top-rope soloing accidents. When I first started climbing (the dark ages), rope soloing (either top rope or lead) was virtually unknown and, to this day, I’ve only ever come across one person engaged in top-rope solo climbing at a crag in Castlegar, B.C. The bloke was climbing a 5.10 or 5.11 crack climb and all I really remember is that he had a boom box (also a thing from the dark ages) blasting (at a sensitive residential crag) and the whole procedure from set up to climb appeared to take an inordinate amount of time.

H. Mutch photo

The rise in rope soloing is perplexing given that there are more people climbing today than ever before in history and yet, apparently people are having trouble finding partners. I have to wonder if this reveals something about our culture, which is both increasingly individualistic and increasingly divided along identity lines. If you’ll only climb with women, or non-binary people (whatever that is), or black, brown or yellow people you might start to run short of climbing partners.

Alternatively, it could be social media culture. In an age when everyone is “projecting” it’s gotta be like solving the middle east crisis to find a partner who wants to project your project, on the day, time, humidity level and lunar cycle that your training schedule predicts you’ll be peaking to send the project and clip the chains. While I understand the satisfaction of finally accomplishing something you have worked hard for, I wonder if we have lost something ineffable about climbing when every midwit climber believes the most important thing is working their project not having a good time with their climbing buddies.

Today I paddled out to the Tollgate Islands with some friends. It was so nice to talk with people you haven’t seen for a while, to hear how their lives and the lives of their families are going, to share a little bit in their joys and adventures, and to remember that we are connected by more than some filaments of nylon rope, or at least we should be.

Tempo Paddling

Over the last couple of days the swell dropped precipitously until the HS (the average of the highest one third of waves during the observation period – generally the last 20 minutes) was down to only 0.6 metres with a HMax (the highest wave in the observation period) was only about 1.3 metres. Those waves were still packing a punch though with a 15 second wave period. That’s a wave period you associate with Tasmania or South Australia not the south coast of NSW.

PC: DB

At the Tollgate Islands, there were two very relaxed seals hanging off the east side of the south island but no sign of the bigger male I had seen a couple of weeks ago. As we paddled through the gap between the two islands and through various slots and gauntlets on the east side we noted an off-shore wind increasing. By the time we lapped around the north end of the north island, the WNW wind was about 15 knots and it was a cold and wet paddle (at least on one side of our bodies) down to Black Rock where the west side was uncharacteristically calm compared to the east side.

PC: DB

After that we nipped into the headland that bounds Mosquito Bay and headed back home. It was meant to be a “tempo” paddle for me and I had been hoping to keep the pace between 7 and 8 kilometres an hour for the full distance but the wind played a bit of havoc with that. The only other occurrence of note was that we paddled right through the gap between the two rocks that form the bommie off Mosquito Bay. This reef/bommie almost always breaks but today it was calm enough that with a bit of timing, you could pretty much paddle right across!

Letting Go

Never mistake anger for fear. Andy Kirkpatrick.

It’s a new month which means a change in my strength training programme. I’ve gone back to April’s schedule which is “compound burner sets” with a lower body/upper body split. I like this schedule best because, although I am stiff and sore the day after training, I can fool myself that I get an extra day of recovery before training again because my lower body rests (sort of) while I train upper body.

Compound burner sets are an interesting way to train. You do 6 to 12 repetitions of a compound movement (for example weighted back squats) and then you follow immediately on with 15 to 25 repetitions of an isolation exercise for the primary muscle group you worked (something like leg extensions or lean backs if you did squats as your compound move). After a couple of minutes rest (I generally do a bit of stretching) you rotate through this couplet three or four more times. The day after, you will discover why this is aptly called a “burner set.” Predictably, I woke up this morning with that characteristic “day after leg day feeling.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the uncomfortable conversation I had the other day, which was a follow up to a disagreement that happened on a sea kayaking trip. For over 18 months I’ve thought that if I did two very, very minor things differently I could have prevented what happened. Today, as I woke to the utter predictability of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) I finally realised that the blow up was just as inevitable. The timing could be modified, but the festering resentment was never going to go away. I could have prostrated myself in a replica of Dandavat Parikrama as the Hindu pilgrims do and nothing would have changed. At heart, I am a fixer, and it drives me a bit nuts that I can’t fix this, but sometimes the fix is simply to let something go.

Two Paddling Days

“I don’t want any more bump,” said Doug when I suggested lapping around the east side of the Tollgate Islands on our way back from Flat Rock Island. Fair enough, it was a bumpy day after a storm blew through the day before so even though there was no wind to speak off, the sea was lumpy and the swell pumping with a period of over 10 seconds. I did some sprint intervals on the way back during which my speed bumped up to 10 kilometres/hour. Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could paddle at 10 kilometres/hour for over about 25 seconds!

On Tuesday, I paddled with Robbie and Rae from Kioloa north to Termeil Beach (and back) where it was easy to land despite the beach facing due east. The swell was small, the wind light from the northwest. Robbie and Rae are “straight liners.” We were over half a kilometre off-shore even though there was very little swell. Unlike today, which was cloudy, it was sunny on Tuesday and warm in the sun.