The Sharp End of Fear

I have been here before.

Lying at the base of a cliff, eyes closed and still tied into the rope. One climbing shoe on, the other having been thrown into the bushes somewhere. Waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in as I elevate my rapidly swelling ankle in a vain attempt to make the throbbing pain stop.

I do not want to be here again.

The first incident was a severe sprain suffered after a slight climber-belayer miscommunication. I said “Take!” with my feet well above a bolt and he listened to me and sat back while reeling in the slack. Some physics major friends of mine had a great time calculating the acceleration and force of which I was driven into the wall. Back at Miguel’s that night I was the unfortunate object of everyone’s attention and found myself explaining the accident over again as each group came back to the campground and saw me perched with my cantaloupe sized ankle propped up under a bag of ice. With the added bonus of it being a college long weekend I was able to enjoy several med and pre-med students play doctor and poke, prod and twist the ankle to see exactly where it hurt. I held my tongue and fought the urge to tell them it hurt everywhere that it was purple and blue. I needed these students to think that they were giving me a proper diagnosis before checking their first aid kits and doling out whatever painkiller or anti-inflammatory they deemed necessary. By the end of the evening I had accrued quite the little stash of strong-as-you-can-get over the counter drugs and was popping them like candy.

I had planned to be in Kentucky for ten days on that trip. My mom, who had come down for the long weekend, had other ideas when she saw my ankle still quite swollen the next morning. Giving up the one day of nice weather of her three day stay, she insisted that I see a doctor. A few hours later we were sitting in the Winchester hospital lying to a nurse about my hiking accident to avoid any problems of not having climbing covered under my insurance. Once I explained that I was a Canadian and had valid medical coverage I was immediately whisked off to x-ray and to an explanation about how nothing was broken but that I had sprained it about as badly as I possibly could have. One nice pair of crutches and a professional bandage job later, and I was back on the street with an admonition about being careful when hiking around the Gorge. Seems there had been an increase in the number of similar ‘hiking’ accidents there over the last few years, an increase which probably would have matched that of the Red River Gorge’s recent popularity as a sport climbing destination. The next morning I was packed into mom’s Hyundai with arrangements to have my friends bring my gear home in a week.

Most people will experience some major injury during their childhood, a broken leg or arm, which tempers their fear of being seriously hurt. The worst injury I had sustained was a mildly cracked bone in my foot which, although a little painful, caused me no real problems and was not even worth casting. Now, at twenty-one years old I had received my first real dose of pain and inconvenience. My recovery was relatively quick considering the damage, two weeks on crutches and another two weeks of limping around awkwardly. I was able to climb again before the ankle could sustain a jog and within six months was pushing myself on one of the harder routes at a nearby gym. Reaching up and attempting to pull through a strenuous underclingy sidepull I felt a twang in my right middle finger. Lateral ligament damage. Off climbing and onto the couch, but at least it was fun showing everyone which finger hurt.

Another six months and I was again pushing my way back through the grades when I fell from a steep crux in Rumney and slammed my left ankle on a slab. Back on the couch I found myself wondering whether there was anything good on TV that night more often than I thought about getting back to climbing. I was beginning to develop a fear of falling which culminated in a panic attack on a slabby 5.7 during a recovery trip back to Kentucky. Being out on lead made my stomach churn viciously and I would have been happy to never see the sharp end of a rope again.

Time healed more than my physical wounds though, and I was soon eager to climb again. I jumped at the chance when a sympathetic friend invited me to road trip across the US with him before spending two months climbing in California. A week before the trip I was attempting to jump mount a slackline when I tumbled over the other side and rolled my left ankle again. Fortunately the sprain was minor and I was able to recover just in time to blow out my knee ten days into the trip. While pulling a not-so-awkward move I felt, and those watching heard, a pop in my left knee. Never having been a big fan of doctors, I wore a brace and took it easy for a couple of weeks but never found out what happened to it. My theory was minor ACL damage but not enough to warrant extensive time off or surgery. Most of that summer was spent trying to climb injured and fighting back the nauseating fear that crept in whenever my waist passed a bolt.

Returning home I threw myself into bouldering and found new confidence in pulling hard moves with no rope attached to me. I was soon at the point where I would rather be climbing twenty feet off the deck than move two feet above a bolt on a climb with a clean fall. Mentally, leading was gone for me and I was not sure I would ever get it back.

To regain my sense of confidence on rock I have had to re-discover what it was that I loved about climbing in the first place. There is a certain feeling one gets when a climb is flowing properly, gear is falling into placements effortlessly and everything is moving in your favor. It has been over two years since my last accident and I am now living and climbing in Squamish, BC. In the last week I have been out leading on both gear and bolts and have felt almost none of the hesitation that has plagued me over these last few years. By filling myself with love and happiness for climbing it seems that there is no room left for fear to stand in my way.