My Mountain to Climb

From Women’s Health mag...

Oh hey, I forgot that I have a place to put climbing stuff, hello Climb Log. I’ve been out doing winter things.

Well we got run off of Bear Creek Spire again. I knew it was a good possibility so I didn't even give myself the opportunity to imagine the reality of climbing.

Who knows, maybe I was a little relieved along with the disappointment. I kept hearing stories from people all week about bad accidents. So much that I was actively warding off a complex. Jim told me that when he climbed it years ago, he met a family on the ascent. Later he’d heard yelling and thought that they were celebrating the summit, but found out later that the father had dislodged a boulder that fell down and crushed his daughter. Just a few weeks back when we were hiking near the Palisades, someone fell in the notch and died. Then someone on the trail was telling us about an accident up on Matterhorn where a guy’s glissade went out of control.  I've been a little weary lately, so I guess I was trying to get myself into a better mindset during the approach. As manageable as the climb is, it doesn’t take much especially for a beginner. 

We got all of the way up the talus fields almost to the base, when Tim had to turn around. It's not his fault; despite meds, the altitude was giving him a blinding headache and causing him to move at an unsustainable pace. We wouldn't make it up and back in time. He felt horrible about it - that he'd suggested we try again and that again we'd gone through all that work for nothing. I let him go down and I took a minute to sit on a rock, to try to absorb as much as I could of the moment.

After a press event, a doctor from the audience went up to Honnold’s friend and whispered, “His amygdala’s not working.” The amygdala controls fight and flight response; it’s the fear center of the brain. Alex was game when researchers approached him to take that theory to task.