the climber's death

[sk]

I know i will die one day. and i do not resent that. I do not pretend i have controle over the where or the when. only the way i live each day i have. I think i am over caustious sometimes and other times i think i am not carful enough. I can only live, climb what have you to my level and not judge myslef by the accomplishements of others, but by my own goals and joys and loves.

 

cheesy quote but i like it "live like there is no tomorrow love like you have nver been hurt and dance" or something like that life is realy only worht living if you are willing to live out loud and with GUSTO

[archenemy]

I've heard this many times, that climbing is the shizzle; no, not really the shizzle but the pursuit of it is some lofty, noble endeavor. I wonder though if it's not really an indicator of something else. What is it called...? Transvaluation?? Where values are reversed based on their framing? Maybe the impulse is more base than that. That rather than a noble influence, it's more something like hatred. Of fear, of weakness, of anonymity, of inferiority...

 

The goal is the same. To make us more than we are or ordinarily would be. I suppose you could call that impulse Promethean in which case there is a price to be paid.

 

It's not about the ego or the self. It's about the experience. That shit is real and intense. Of course climbing isn't the only way to get this feeling, but whatever it happens to be, it's always dangerous, or at least scary.

 

Then again, you could masturbate your whole life and stay safe...

 

I thank god that climbing and masturbating are not mutually exclusive.

[Dru]

Unless you get tendinitis in your wrists from all that crimping.

[TeleRoss]

the life-expectancy of a BC skier is finite

Dude, everyones life expectancy is finite

[AllYouCanEat]

When my best friend died a climber’s death (of sorts), I thought about my relationship with life and how my day to day existence would potentially lead me towards a similar fate. I concluded my only definite answer is, “You’ll die one day. You just don’t know when.” In that sense, I only have how I live my life left to me. Five days of the week spent at work are the cost of my kosher life, but this doesn’t make me happiest. On the other side of the spectrum are my passions, which include many outdoor activities scattered among the more mundane ones like reading. While I am not happy just working, neither am I happy just climbing, though I could imagine a life spent doing as much. It has the taste and color of being something that I would want, but it isn’t. I need something more. I know most people do. I need work of some sort to keep me sane and I need some sort of danger to help me see the balance of things. It brings me back to a medium; a normalcy. So I don’t want to die a climber’s death, but I could accept it if it allows me to stay near a medium and not constantly dancing on the outer fringes of insanity and depression.

 

In all of the years of reading this board, I think that this is one of the best threads. As such, a contribution of my own seemed appropriate.

[sk]

I've heard this many times, that climbing is the shizzle; no, not really the shizzle but the pursuit of it is some lofty, noble endeavor. I wonder though if it's not really an indicator of something else. What is it called...? Transvaluation?? Where values are reversed based on their framing? Maybe the impulse is more base than that. That rather than a noble influence, it's more something like hatred. Of fear, of weakness, of anonymity, of inferiority...

 

The goal is the same. To make us more than we are or ordinarily would be. I suppose you could call that impulse Promethean in which case there is a price to be paid.

 

It's not about the ego or the self. It's about the experience. That shit is real and intense. Of course climbing isn't the only way to get this feeling, but whatever it happens to be, it's always dangerous, or at least scary.

 

Then again, you could masturbate your whole life and stay safe...

 

I thank god that climbing and masturbating are not mutually exclusive.

 

if they were there would be alot fewer climbers

Edited October 24, 2005 by Muffy_The_Wanker_Sprayer

[Norman_Clyde]

Well put, Jason.

 

Muffy, the lyric you're looking for is by Guy Clark, a Texas songwriter. I almost posted another line from the same song in my first post on this thread: "In life as in love, I need to remember:/There's such a thing as trying too hard.". He goes on to say:

 

You've got to sing

Like you don't need the money

Love like you'll never get hurt

You've got to dance

Like nobody's watching

It's got to come from the heart

If you want it to work.

Edited October 25, 2005 by Norman_Clyde

[Lowell_Skoog]

Good thread.

 

If I knew I had a choice between dying while climbing and quitting climbing to live longer, I would stop climbing. Simple decision. There's a lot more to life than climbing, and I have a lot more potential in me than just being a climber.

 

I continue to enjoy climbing, and I will continue to try to balance it with the rest of my life. But when I think back to my youth, when I was more obsessed with climbing, it's clear to me that I used climbing to fill in a life that could have been filled in other ways.

 

Obsession with climbing often reflects narrow-mindedness and a lack of imagination. I reject the notion that climbers live more fully than non-climbers, or that climbing is more noble than other life pursuits. Climbing is a tremendously self-absorbed activity, and if you're life is focused just on doing climbs you're missing a lot.

 

I've felt this way for a long time, and the death of my brother last week had nothing to do with it.

[billcoe]

Except for my last post, this is really an amazing thread. Just reading it slowly this time shows there to be some real powerful words, emotions and thoughts. Thank you all for opening up and sharing some fragile depth.

 

I'm sure I speak for all of us, including those of us who never had the good fortune to meet him, sorry to hear of your brother's fall Lowell.

[Dru]

I could live without spraying but not without climbing.

 

Some of the activities I include in what climbing is for me are pretty low-risk, basically hiking. Some of them are high-risk, like free soloing or highball bouldering. I think I like them all equally... certainly I do not prefer the high-risk ones.

 

I do need to do things other than climb. I know I can't make it as a full time climber. I tried it and I didn't like the eternal poverty or the inability to use my education. But I see my life outside climbing as enabling or supporting my climbing time.

 

Really, climbing bears a lot of resemblance to other obsessive hobbies. Let's say instead of climbing, this discussion was about model train building, or stamp collecting. As climbers we would all probably think it was dumb to collect stamps if it was that risky. But what are the stamp collectors getting out of it?

 

This isn't really an essay. It's more of a series of disconnected paragraphs. Basically I see two extreme ends and a lot of people in the middle with responses. At one end is the Dan Osman, (maybe Tobin Sorensen or John Yablonski is a better example) "The risk is all" attitude. At the other end you have the bitter David Roberts or outsider Maria Coffey attitude "Climbing is risking YOUR LIFE and YOUR LIFE is precious and MUST NOT BE RISKED! Climbers are stupid fools or addicts!"

 

I like living my life. I don't want to die. If I did I could kill myself a lot quicker than by climbing. I don't even smoke tobacco - that stuff is bad for you. I score low on most of those "Are you a risk taker" pop psychology quizzes. So maybe I'm not a typical climber, but for me, climbing is not about risk.

 

That said I accept that climbing increases my chance of death or injury. I accept that. If I do die or if I am ever seriously injured I will not complain about it. I know the risks, I have evaluated them and I accept them. They are a cost of doing business. They are a rule of the game. If you want to play you have to draw a card and it might be the Queen of Spades.

 

This discussion always come around to death. I don't worry about death. I worry about permanent injury. I know a guy who fell down at Castle Crags while hiking a class 2 scree slope, hit his head, and is permanently wheelchair bound, mentally impaired, slurs, drools and suffers fits of rage. Personally, and no disrespect to him, I'd rather die than live that disabled - more power to him for choosing to tough it out. But maybe we shouldn't consider death as the worst that can happen to you. Frankly I recently suffered my grandmother's slow decline and eventual death and I do not want to go that way either.

 

Our society is one of the first EVER in the history of humanity which has not had a significant portion of the populace die young, either from disease, war, or other causes. Maybe we regard an early death as unnatural as a result. I said it earlier differently but it's not about how long you live but what you do and who you are that matters.

 

If I die climbing I wouldn't want anyone to call me a "risk taker". They could call me a suicide but really I don't think that would be accurate either.

 

When I look at my life to date I'm mostly happy with it. If I die though, it will seem unfinished and I intend to keep it that way. I don't have any reason to want to check out early. I'll leave that until I reach the Guy Waterman stage.

 

I miss my friends who have died climbing but not any more than my friends who died not climbing.

[sk]

Well put, Jason.

 

Muffy, the lyric you're looking for is by Guy Clark, a Texas songwriter. I almost posted another line from the same song in my first post on this thread: "In life as in love,I need to remember:/There's such a thing as trying to hard.". He goes on to say:

 

You've got to sing

Like you don't need the money

Love like you'll never get hurt

You've got to dance

Like nobody's watching

It's got to come from the heart

If you want it to work.

 

thank you, yes that does the trick. you know i joke arround alot here... but the truth is we all loose people we love weathter they are climbers or not. I just hope that we all find some joy and some love between now and when we leave here.

 

oh and what dru said

[Rad]

There are lots of interesting things in this thread. It seems many people have thought about how to manage the risks of climbing.

 

I think people should be remembered for how they lived, not how they died. I hope all those whose lives were touched by Carl Skoog are richer for it.

 

My view of risks and dying has changed over time. When I was a teenager, I thought it would be cool to die in a blaze of glory someday. In a way, Jimi Hendrix was a god to me, and his brief, intense, passionate life was inspiring. Then my father was diagnosed with cancer.

 

My view of death was re-formed during the four year roller-coaster battle that culminated with my father’s death when I was 20. In that time we cried together, talked about a lot of things, and came to know each other better than we had before his illness.

 

We talked about different kinds of deaths. Despite the pain and suffering of cancer and its treatments, my dad felt lucky to have the time he did. In any abrupt, unanticipated death, there are a lot of loose ends that cause pain: things left unsaid or unresolved that cause pain, commitments made by the deceased that encumber the living, not to mention financial and legal matters. My dad was able to tie up those loose ends before he passed away.

 

We thought we were ready for his passing, but we were not. We all felt a terrible emptiness for some time afterward. That was a long ago, but I came away with some things that continue to define my world view. The most important pieces fall into three points:

 

-I believe the most important thing in life is love, including that with friends and family. Cultivate it and you will be rich. Everything else is secondary. Tell people you love them while you can because you can’t do it after you’re gone.

 

-My father and I both believe that there is no afterlife. This is it. Don’t delay in pursuing your dreams. You might not be around or able to pursue them if you wait too long.

 

-I want to leave the world a little more beautiful, in one way or another, than when I found it. I have been fortunate in my opportunities in life and feel an obligation to pursue a career that allows me to give something back.

 

………………

 

I took up climbing after my father died, in large part because I grew up in New Jersey and didn't find climbing until I went to college in California. I have always taken risks of one sort or another in life, and climbing is no exception, but I have never been reckless.

 

Now that have a wife and two great kids, I have a lot of reasons to stay healthy and stick around for a years to come. I find friendships and relationships keep getting better with time.

 

I still climb and I still take risks. I feel that to some degree reward, in all forms, is a function of risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That said, I try hard not to put all my chips on a single roll of the dice. I want to be around to take my kids climbing someday.

 

................

 

Life is what you make it, each day precious.

[Fairweather]

The next time you visit a cemetery, look at the all the flowers on the graves around you. Then, look across the way at the markers of those who passed in the 40's and 50's. Not as many flowers. And those gravestones that are dated from the 1930's and earlier have no flowers at all. Those who knew and loved them are gone as well. Unless those in the ground made a difference in their world such that it is historically noted, they are lost. How many climbers lie in the ground with nobody left to know or care about their adventures? Without an afterlife this existence here is just an exercise in futility - all for nothing.

[TeleRoss]

I don't want to die, but I don't not want to die...How can I possibly say that I prefer life to death? for there is a certain measure of the unknown is there not? Does anyone know someone whose died that has come back to say they wish they hadn't?

But seriously, death tends to be painful for those of us who remain, because again, of the unknown...we don't know where they are or what has become of them...but for them, well, who knows?

so to say that I prefer one state over the other presumes that I know what each state entails, but I do not, therefore all I can say with certainty is that life is great and death...well death is one of the certainties of life and if life is great and if being alive means at some point being dead...wel then how bad can it be?

[Dechristo]

malleability

[Dru]

I don't need the false promise of an afterlife to justify my life. My life justifies itself through my actions.

 

I don't need to put flowers on graves to remember the dead. The dead live in the living, not in graves.

 

The claim is often made that climbing is a selfish activity. Perhaps this is because it does not benefit one's "country", like military service, or "science", like being an astronaut, or "the consumer", like being a faller in the Coastal lumber industry - all professions which have a similar risk profile to climbing. Yet it is undeniable that climbing can benefit others than the climber. Why else would the voracious appetite for accounts of climbing exist? Why would non-climbers come up to climbers and tell them how inspiring they are?

[Geek_the_Greek]

With Dru writing sincere, heartfelt answers, you KNOW this is a rare thread!

 

The problem with the 'inspiration' model is that it doesn't take very many good climbers to inspire the thousands of 'inspirees' out there. I don't think anyone will ever be particularly inspired by my climbing (as opposed to Peter Croft or Lynn Hill or whoever out there that does it all way way more gracefully and better than me). To me it does come down to some sort of contribution - not necessarily positive (what is a positive contribution to the world, really? So subjective...): I feel that I am better at other things in life than I am at climbing. Therefore, to die climbing would be a waste of those other things. I realize that I may die climbing, but I hope I do not, for that reason.

 

If I reach my 70s or 80s, then I suppose to die climbing might be a blessing at that point, save me and those around me a painful decline. But to say that now is meaningless, because chances are good that I won't feel that way in 40 or 50 years.

[sterlingclimber]

I wonder if people knew they where going to die in a car accident if they would stop driving? If they knew they where going to die in a plane crash they would stop flying......... I could go on and on..... I suppose if you knew you where going to die doing "something" you would choose not to do it. Life is what you make it, choose your path wellworn or less travled and get on with it. You don't get a second chance. I enjoyed the thought, thanks,

[Stefan]

If I knew I had a choice between dying while climbing and quitting climbing to live longer, I would stop climbing. Simple decision. There's a lot more to life than climbing, and I have a lot more potential in me than just being a climber.

 

True that for me too. Being married and having children has changed that perception for me. Climbing is just a hobby for me.

 

I often wonder what I will think when I am on my deathbed, so I try to listen to others who are on their deathbed and learn from what they say.

 

Many on their deathbed often say they wish they had spent more time with their families and friends. I will take their wise words into consideration.

[Ireneo_Funes]

With Dru writing sincere, heartfelt answers, you KNOW this is a rare thread!

 

Yeah, really! I had to rub my eyes and do a double-take.

 

I have to say that like Dru I think a lot more about being seriously injured than dying. Dying is inevitable for everybody, but living in a wheelchair is not.

 

A friend of mine died in the mountains earlier this year. When I heard about the circumstances of his death and the last few moments of his life, during which I'm fairly sure he was terrified out of his mind, I decided that it didn't make sense to say he "died doing what he loved." I could stand to hear this phrase a little less, I guess.

[tanstaafl]

The problem with the 'inspiration' model is that it doesn't take very many good climbers to inspire the thousands of 'inspirees' out there. I don't think anyone will ever be particularly inspired by my climbing (as opposed to Peter Croft or Lynn Hill or whoever out there that does it all way way more gracefully and better than me).

 

You don't have to be a particularly good climber in order to inspire others. Some people are more inspired by non-superstars.

I certainly never thought anyone would be inspired by my weekend-warrior-level climbing, but a couple of people have told me that they are. You never know the effect you might have on others.

[Gary_Yngve]

You don't have to be a particularly good climber in order to inspire others. Some people are more inspired by non-superstars.

I certainly never thought anyone would be inspired by my weekend-warrior-level climbing, but a couple of people have told me that they are. You never know the effect you might have on others.

 

A few weeks ago I was up on Vesper with an albinist alpinist. Because of his condition, he has few cones in his fovea, and as a result has poor depth perception. Going downhill across steep wet rocky rooty crap was challenging for him, but he persevered, without a single complaint. I was inspired/impressed.

[AlpineRose]

Death is the Great Unknown. So the question is not whether or not there is life after death but rather "what is my relationship to the unknown?"

[Ed_Seedhouse]

So the question is not whether or not there is life after death

 

It's easy to prove there is life after death. In 1943 I was dead, in 1944 I was alive. q.e.d.

[Dechristo]

I find no birth or death less valid, noble, or fortunate than another... no matter the circumstance. Your birth was no less important than that of Jesus of Nazareth and your death no less than that of Mahatma Ghandi. Your contribution no more important than that of an aborted fetus; we all leave a mark and its significance, however limited, is inestimable in its effect.

 

Everyone plays their part; good or evil, ugly or beautiful, miniscule or extensive. You are inimitable and unique. No one, but you, can perform your life. No one, but you, can perform your death. No one, but you, knows the fullness and sublimity of beauty from which your heart sups.

 

Our deaths will find each of us doing our part.