There is no difference between thinking about yourself and being miserable. Jordan Peterson.
Near the end of almost an hour of near meaningless babble, when I semi-seriously thought about throwing myself off the nearby cliff onto the rocks below to end the misery of listening to two self-obsessed people talk about their climb up Temple Crag, I heard the words Contact Pass, and thought, “Wait just a minute, I think I’ve been to Contact Pass.”
And, in fact, I have. Back in 2011, the year before Doug and I moved to Australia, we skied up to Contact Pass at the end of April. My trip notes indicate that I took my skis off and kicked steps for about 60 metres, while Doug managed to ski the entire distance to the pass. I remember the pass, it was a very spectacular narrow notch with Temple Crag on one side and an unnamed peak on the other. Our trip notes also indicate that we had an excellent corn snow descent. We had come up from the South Fork of Big Pine Creek, while a few years previously we had hiked into the Big Pine Lakes from the North Fork of Big Pine Creek. Things are high in the Sierra Mountains. Big Pine Lakes lie at over 3,000 metres while Temple Crag is almost 4,000 metres high. I’d be huffing and puffing up there now after a decade of living at sea level.
I’m not sure why M and M featured on the Sharp End Podcast, a podcast ostensibly about mountain accidents, as there was no accident and their story is merely a trip report. Interesting, perhaps, to people who are intent on climbing Temple Crag, but otherwise similar to dozens of other trip reports. What stood out to me, apart from the fact that M and M both talked too much to say too little, was how much emphasis they put on “checking in with each other.” The final half hour of the podcast, it’s possible they mention “check in” around a million times (OK, I’m exaggerating). These people were slow, 8 hours to descend 500 feet is slow, as is 4 hours to ascend a couple of hundred feet to get to the start of the climb. As I listened, I wondered if BB “checked in” with his partners every five minutes when climbing Wild Thing on MountChephren or did he and his partners simply focus on the task at hand, climbing the impressive and daunting east face in winter? Would these two slow climbers have been faster if they spent less time “checking in” and more time climbing?
I’m going to check in with my readers now and say that if you think Blanchard or any other serious adventure athlete spends such an inordinate amount of time and energy “checking in” you don’t understand peak performance. Peak performance requires doing things despite how you feel, because, in all honesty, you probably feel like quitting.
Which is not to say that outdoor adventurers should ignore conditions. If you are in the middle of a thunder-storm (as M and M were on their first attempt up Temple Crag), bailing is entirely appropriate, but, mostly your feelings don’t matter; what matters is facts, even though facts are slippery to grasp in dynamic outdoor environments.
The emotional people who like to “check in” constantly, often seem to be a generation or two younger than me which makes me wonder if this is a generational issue or a social and cultural issue. It’s possible it’s both. Perhaps, as you get older, you start to realise that if you want to get shit done you have to ignore your emotions and focus on the task at hand, but, it’s likely that a bigger chunk is cultural. Young people today are raised to believe that feelings are all important and virtually immutable, when in fact feelings are merely imperfect conjectures of our defective attention system. We give away our own power when we become focused to the point of obsession on our feelings. If you are 21 hours into a 23 hour day, forget about your feelings or “checking in” and focus on getting the f**k off the mountain.
I don’t mean to denigrate M and M’s achievement. They did an awful lot of things right and, most importantly were willing to have a go, not just once but twice. Undoubtedly, they have the hubris of youth; that mix of heady self-confidence and absolute certainty that allows adventurers to charge forth into the face of challenges they can’t quite imagine unencumbered by the baggage of decades of hard won summits and equally disappointing retreats. Those times you tried and failed, that eat away at your confidence; the accidents, the injuries, even the fatalities. All those years and experiences that strip away youthful hubris and leave you knowing that you can prepare for success but the outcome might well be as predictable as game of roulette.
There are many things I miss about youth. The physical strengths of course, but more importantly the blind faith that allows you to set off on expeditions and adventures for which you are ill-prepared whilst holding fast to your own ability in the belief that success is all but guaranteed. You get older, your body is less cooperative, but your mind still dreams of the days when you believed anything was possible and acted accordingly.
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