A few weeks ago, I was climbing in a gym. After some warm-up routes, I decided to hop on a newly set 5.12a. This was once a gym grade that didn’t come with much doubt — sure I could mess something up, but if I figured out the sequences, I wouldn’t fall.
As I started up the route, it felt harder than I’d anticipated. I fought through a few moves, and about halfway up, I noticed someone about ten feet below me and and to my right. Just then, I followed a sequence of crimps that traversed to the right, above the other climber. A fall would probably not cause a collision, but it could be close. I thought, “just get through the sequence, it doesn’t look too hard. This is just the nature of gym climbing.” I’d been in this situation a hundred times, and it’s always ended just fine.
But this time, I panicked.
Imagining falling and being in another accident immediately weakened my grip. I grabbed a quickdraw, clipped, and called for a take. I sat on my rope, cheering on the other climber as she passed, trying not to let on that my insides were coursing with adrenaline. I tried to continue climbing, but couldn’t. When I lowered, the gym closed in around me. All of the voices, music, and sounds of climbing, blended together. I couldn’t focus on my partner when they were yelling commands. I had to stop the session. I went into the locker room, sat down in the shower, tried not to cry, and tried not to vomit.
It was almost eight months ago that my Shunt completely detached from my rope and I fell 35 feet to the ground. My knee has cooperated enough lately to allow me to walk to a few roadside crags, and it’s been great to get outside and climb again. There have even been a few moments over the last month that I’ve felt what I can only describe, with tremendous gratitude, as almost normal.
But with my improving physical health has come mental setbacks. My anxiety levels have actually increased steadily over the last two months. I lose sleep thinking about potential climbing accidents. When I do sleep, I’ve been dreaming a lot about falling and ropes disconnecting. On the rock, I spend far too much time considering, and vividly visualizing, all of the ways my gear could fail. I imagine a rope slicing, an anchor failing, my harness or a Grigri ripping apart. I’ll be resting on top rope when suddenly my stomach drops, and in my mind, I’m in free fall. I hit the ground, and relive the accident in a matter of seconds.
This is not the helpful kind of fear that keeps you from danger. It’s the obsessive, overwhelming, panic-inducing fear that paralyses. It’s simply not possible to perform the difficult and precise task of climbing anywhere near your limit with visions of dying dancing in your head.
Right now, my main issue seems to be with trust.
First, I can’t trust my body to do what it used to do. My right knee still unexpectedly buckles below me, my right elbow locks up without warning, and my strength levels dropped quite a bit in my 3+ month wheelchair stay. Those holds look like things I can grab, but these days, there’s a lot more internal doubt about what my fingers and body are capable of.
Next, to make a long story short, a piece of gear that I trusted, failed to do what I expected it to do. The manufacturer has done as little as possible to fully inform the climbing community of this low-force failure mode, despite the fact that it nearly killed two people in the span of two months. Previously, I felt that a climbing gear manufacturer would be more forthcoming with this type of information. Now, I look at the gear around me and imagine the actuary who shrugged off a few likely deaths as acceptable collateral for getting my money.
Finally, I don’t trust climbing to do what it used to do for me. I spent over a decade falling in love with and trying to master this sport. Nine months ago, and for years before that, I loved every moment I was on the rock. It was my escape from reality, my mental and physical challenge, my addiction, my religion.
What do you do when the thing that you rely on for your general well-being, suddenly starts having the opposite effect?
I’ve built my life around climbing — even quitting my job to become a climbing coach just a week before my accident — so I want to figure this out. And clearly I have a lot of questions and very few answers here…
But I know that we all have to trust in order to live normal lives. Right now, I trust that this building that I’m typing in was constructed properly. I trust that the people who drive near me won’t make a fatal mistake. I trust that the food that I eat isn’t contaminated. I trust that Jackie won’t break my heart. I trust my physical therapists, who say that all of the work I put into rehab will pay off.
Consciously or unconsciously, I place an overwhelming amount of my well-being into the hands of others on a daily basis. But in the moments of my life when I could have used an extra shoulder to lean on, I’ve been stubborn. I tend to struggle quietly. To play down pain with a smile. I internalize. I write songs. I write essays. I go it alone.
Why? Maybe it’s because my issues seem so small compared to others and, at the same time, too big a burden to place on someone else. Maybe it’s a cultural taboo that guides me away from asking for help. Maybe I feel that expressing an issue out loud makes it real. Or maybe I lack the trust that another human, with their own flaws and issues, could help me.
If I can take a positive from this accident, it’s that it forced me to be vulnerable. For the first time in my life, I was in a situation that I couldn’t handle on my own. In fact, I would have died out there alone, on the ground unable to move. I had no choice but to trust.
And strangers rose to the occasion. They held me in their lap. They got me safely and quickly to a helicopter. They performed surgery. They stayed by my bedside. They kept me alive and got me back on my feet.
Eight months later, it seems that I still need help. I can walk again, but my emotions are in disrepair. My anxiety levels are high. I don’t trust my body, my gear, or the sport that keeps me going. But I know that I can reach out for help — I’ve contacted my doctor about therapy options. Because right now, I can only trust that there’s a stranger out there who can help me get back on my feet.