Fear on the Cliff

Saturday morning Tom Powell and I went rock climbing. Tom led and anchored the route that included a huge overhang. I tied in and climbed up to right below the overhang without a problem. The overhang was around five feet. That is pretty serious. It takes incredible muscles just to hold your body to an overhang, let alone move along it and clamber over it. Think of not just holding on to the ceiling now above you, but pulling your body up against it, flat, so you can use your feet along the ceiling. You are fighting gravity and 168 pounds, in my case. The overhang didn’t cut straight across the cliff face; it was jagged so with a little traversing (climbing sideways instead of up) you could then climb into a little cove; in the sense that the five foot overhang was still above you, but also overhung you vertically to your left and right. In this little fold there was a good crack diagonally to your side. From here you could squeeze into this crack and use this thin area of the vertical overhang to get a hold and move yourself around and over. So you didn’t need the strength or skill to go upside down and fight gravity.

I put some chalk on my hands and went for it, deciding to just muscle my way up. I pushed off the wall and up into the crack using just my arms. I ended with my head and right shoulder pinned to the rock hanging above me. The crack was smaller than it had appeared and I was not going to fit so far in. My feet were dangling in the air and unable to touch stone. I would have to move to the edge of this little crack and then try and fit up through it. But to do that I needed my feet. So I frantically pulled my left leg up and clawed at the rock with my foot trying to find a tiny disturbance that I could catch my toe on and hold. I found one and was able to free my head and shoulder and shift my body out away from the cliff to where the crack was wider. I shifted my right handhold exactly as my left toe slipped off the overhang. My body jerked down but my hands held. I was now holding myself by my arms again.

This is when the fear hit. I was hanging out well from the wall. Tom was forty feet directly below me. I was sweating. The wind was gusting terribly and knocking me about. And I realized I had to pull myself up on this thin little corner of rock and slide out and around the overhang. I had no idea what was around the corner; where would I put my hands? I was going to fall. Fear. What if Tom didn’t catch me? What if the rope sawed free on the rock ledge and I dropped? What if I broke my sunglasses? Fear.

But I took a breath and told myself ‘so what?’ I stopped my mind and said, ‘if any of that happened that would be bad. But none of those are very likely. I am not falling. Why fear what is not happening?’

I immediately analyzed my options to move upwards and started attempting them. As soon as I focused my mind on finding a foothold, then shifting my weight so I could lift my left hand over the edge and find a handhold, then getting my right arm over, then bringing my right foot up so it was no longer dangling in the wind, my fear completely vanished. I was left alone on the rock ledge. I felt the wind. I felt the hot sun on my neck. I felt the rock under me. And I moved forward and upward. I didn’t think about how amazingly I had just erased my fear but wasted no more time distractedly thinking about unlikely possibilities. I got to the top and came back down without another problem and it rocked. Pun intended.