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Aint No Mountain High Enough
I am disappointed that I was born when I was. If I had been born back in the 50s or before, then I should like to have climbed Mount Everest before it became clear that just about everybody has climbed it at one time or another. Looking down the list of people who have conquered it, I often feel that if you put a Starbucks up there then you would not be able to move for people climbing up and down it. OK, perhaps I exaggerate. But one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that climbing is pretty much my hobby, my social life and – I hope – potentially my future career. More specifically, rock climbing is. I just can’t get enough of doing it. I started rock climbing three years ago when my brother showed me a DVD compilation of some of the most sheer, steep rock faces to have been conquered by man, and of the people who had climbed them – in action, obviously. If it had just been “here’s a cliff, and here’s a person who climbed it once” I doubt my attention would have been taken so much. However, my interest was piqued and I asked around to find out about joining a club. Eventually I settled on one in the nearest city, and got my equipment sorted out. From there it was a simple matter of getting to and from the HQ to go to the sites for climbing, but that soon paled in comparison with the idea of tackling trickier surfaces. I got in touch with an acquaintance who had climbed a few, and on odd weekends joined her in trying something more advanced. The first thing she taught me was that with the trickier surfaces, you have to control your determination to beat the cliff. It is tempting to take a look at something daunting and say “there’s no way you’re getting the best of me, no way”. But if you go into it too aggressively, then you stand an excellent chance of coming unstuck. You have to prepare technically, physically and mentally for an endeavour like this – so that’s what I did. And boy, am I ever glad I did. The preparation I put into my very first advanced climb certainly saved me a trip to the hospital, and may well have done more besides. I was about half way up the cliff, having followed all of Sara’s advice and kept pretty close behind her, when I lost my foothold and fell backwards. I twisted my ankle really badly, and could not get a decent grip no matter how hard I tried. Sara had to tell me to literally hang in there (fortunately I was very tightly secured) while she went and got help. While hanging there all I could do was reach into my back pack and do what I could with what was in there – which amounted to a hydration pack and a heat pack. While waiting for the help, I made sure to keep myself hydrated and concentrate on not going into shock. Thank goodness for Sara, for water and for heat packs – I owe a lot to each of them. Copyright Zarro Webmaster@liquidpacks.com
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