Fear in the mountains is normal. I’d even say it’s part of the experience. Aside from young, brazen alpinists who’ve never seen shit hit the fan and old, ice-encrusted mountaineers whose heart is barely more than a miniature serac, we all, at one point or another, experience fear in the mountains. I’m no different. Last weekend, I had a troubling experience with fear that left me questioning parts of my approach to climbing.
I was standing at the bottom of the North Face of Chair Peak, just a couple miles from Snoqualmie Pass. My climbing partner Dane and I had snowshoed to the head of Alpental Valley at dawn before ascending avalanche-prone slopes to a basin between the two-pronged upper mountain. We’d cached our snowshoes and trekking poles there, cinched on our harnesses, and racked up before making our way past a five-party traffic jam at the bottom of the more popular Northeast Buttress. We found ourselves alone below the first pitch of ice, which was swirling with spindrift. This was my third attempt on the North Face. The first time, we hadn’t even made it beyond Source Lake at the bottom of the approach before getting shut down by bad weather. The second time, as a party of three, we’d turned around because we couldn’t all agree on whether to go for it or not. I’d been chomping at the bit since then, so I felt a healthy amount of elation as Dane started cramponing over a small bergschrund guarding the first pitch. We were finally setting out on the North Face. Third time the charm, right?
The first surge of fear came early. Dane made delicate placements while crossing the snow bridge over the bergschrund before announcing that he could see through the bridge and into the pit. This declaration immediately conjured up images of the bridge collapsing, Dane tumbling down the slope, the rope coming tight against my ATC, dragging us both down to the bottom, where we’d lay in a mangled heap of rope, tattered flesh, and bloody ice tools embedded in soft, naive skulls. Along with these thoughts came the usual symptoms of fear: quickening pulse, a flash of heat around my forehead, and a general, physical discomfort. I told Dane I was freaked out. He informed me that he thought it safe, but was happy to back off if I wanted him to. I swallowed hard, told him to go on, and slowly paid out the rope as he tiptoed over the bridge. My heart pumped furiously until Dane made it over, reached good ice, and put in a screw. As soon as he’d secured that vital piece of protection between us, the fear vanished as suddenly as it had arrived.
For the next half-hour or so, I watched him make short work of the pitch. Dane is an accomplished ice-climber who cut his teeth on classic New England test-pieces, so I knew this low-angle, barely-WI3 pitch would be child’s play for him. I gave him an attentive belay just in case, but I never entertained the idea that he might fall. We were mostly sheltered from the wind, and it only reached me in brief gusts, slapping me with splashes of chilly spindrift. Still, I grew colder as I stood immobile, my only movement an occasional swing of my free arm or a quick stamping of my feet. By the time the rope gave three pronounced tugs against my harness (our agreed-upon signal that I could start climbing), I realized that I couldn’t feel my toes at all. Eager to warm up, I unclipped my ice tools and started climbing over the bergschrund. Dane hadn’t lied: I could see right through the snow bridge and into the bergschrund. The bridge couldn’t have been thicker than a foot. I gently hooked my tools into the picked-out snow and gingerly made my way across the chasm, reaching the first ice screw with a heave of relief. I twisted it out, clipped it to my harness, and started onto the pitch proper.
The climbing was good. A tongue of ice spilling down the face, this first pitch followed the edge of a small rock buttress for sixty feet or so before the angle eased (or at least I assumed it eased, as I could no longer see Dane). The ice wasn’t too hard or too soft, and more often than not, a single strike of my tool left the pick firmly embedded into the white surface. That and the fact that I was climbing on a top-rope made the whole affair feel very secure, though a little bit exposed. Down below me, a gigantic white apron of soft, curved powder stretched out into the valley, only marred by the smooth tracks of backcountry skiers. The spindrift still occasionally slapped me, giving the climb a very alpine feel.
As I moved up the ice, only pausing to remove the ice screws one by one, I felt my body start to warm up again, heat pushing its way out of my core and into my extremities. By the time I’d reached the belay and clipped onto Dane’s ice-screw anchor, my toes were finally starting to thaw. Dane told me we needed to have a conversation about the second pitch, and about whether to continue or not, but I was distracted by something else.
The pain started slowly, and I recognized it right away: the screaming barfies. This ailment is well known to climbers in New England, where I learned to ice climb. Back East, where temperatures routinely dip below zero and provide excellent, albeit downright frigid ice-climbing conditions, climbers often freeze their fingers or toes, sometimes for long periods of time. When the frozen digits start to thaw and warm up, they often do so with intense pain, every molecule of warmth returning to the tips of the body in excruciating throbs. The pain is bad enough to sometimes make one scream, and experience nausea, hence the name.
Normally, my toes wouldn’t have frozen in forgiving Pacific Northwest temperatures, but that day I’d stupidly worn my thinner hybrid summer boots instead of my beefy doubles, and the cold had penetrated their thin shell. My digits warmed up very slowly, causing me severe pain for a good ten minutes. Dane and I talked through what to do as I groaned in agony. Above us, a low-angled pitch of snow and ice lead up to a secure tree belay, from where a steeper pitch would lead us to a small col just a hundred feet or so below the summit. The second pitch looked thin, but Dane was quite sure he’d be able to safely scratch his way up it, and even downclimb it if he didn’t like the look of things. I’d only have to provide the belay, and then follow on a top-rope. I would assume none of the risk.
By the time the pain had finally subsided in my toes, Dane and I had reached the end of the conversation. We’d weighed the different factors in whether to continue or turn around: the avalanche dangers, the lateness of the hour, the marginal nature of the second pitch, a potential plan to back off the face, the fact that this was a serious alpine climb with some commitment required, and even my painful toes, which were likely to freeze and thaw again as we repeated the cadence of a still, cold belay followed by a vigorous climb.
In the end, it seemed so reasonable to continue. There was a bit of risk, sure, but well within my tolerance for risk when the reward was enjoyable climbing and a beautiful, coveted summit. We had every reason to push on. And yet, no matter what I did, I just couldn’t pull the trigger and tell Dane to climb on. Something held me back. I couldn’t put my finger on it. It wasn’t a single thing. The condition of my toes was a tad scary, sure, but I knew I wouldn’t get frostbite or anything drastic. The marginal nature of the second pitch was a little bit intimidating as well, but I wasn’t the one leading it. We were about an hour behind schedule, but no more than that. The avalanche danger when rappelling down the gully from the summit was there, but again, it was well within an acceptable margin of safety.
On the other hand, all the auspicious conditions required for this climb were there. The avalanche danger was reasonable. The weather was good for January. The face itself was in decent condition, and we’d even found good quality ice on the first pitch. And yet, I simply couldn’t tell Dane to go on, no matter how much I willed myself. Instead, I told him the opposite.
We went down. Dane rigged up two v-threads, and we were back at the bottom of the face in fifteen minutes. Another fifteen saw us to the basin, where we watched climbers on the Northeast Buttress while racking up our gear. We were just a half-hour removed from the climb, and already I regretted my decision. As we clicked into our snowshoes and started tromping down the approach, a single thought rang out clearly in my mind: we should have gone on.
I’ve been mulling this aborted climb over since we came down from it two weeks ago. What went wrong? How did I allow myself to go from elated and excited to scared and wanting to go down in such a short amount of time? Did we do the right thing going down? Was it a smart call to back off when I wasn’t feeling a hundred percent confident, or should I have kept pushing into my discomfort zone on this fairly straightforward route?
It’s hard to find good answers to these questions. As Dane pointed out to me in our subsequent discussions, bailing can’t ever really be seen as the wrong choice, even if it is an ultra-conservative decision. No one’s ever gotten killed by playing it too safe.
Still though, this incident served to help me understand something. In the mountains, there are two types of fears: fear you should listen to, and fear you don’t have to listen to. For fear you should listen to, think: the temperature is too high and our ice screws are popping out, the weather is heinous and we’re staring at the inside of a ping-pong ball, or the avalanche danger is extremely high and we’re about to cross a loaded slope. This is fear warning you of real, imminent danger, and you had better damn listen to it. For fear you don’t have to listen to, think...well, think of my situation: the climb is alpine, intimidating, committing, and scary for a variety of little reasons, but none that preclude pushing on. You can listen to that fear if you want to. Nobody’s making you climb anything. But you don’t have to. You can push on. Push beyond the fear.
If I’d pushed on that day on Chair Peak, I most likely would have been just fine, and I’d have tagged a nice summit to boot. I’m not saying I was right or wrong, I’m just saying that pushing on wouldn’t have been right or wrong either. Perhaps I’m saying that, more often than not, there isn’t a right or wrong.
So what’s the lesson? Well, it’s as simple as it is vague. Next time I’ll take a deep breath, stop, and ask myself: is this fear I have to listen to?
