Fear and Regret from the Highest Point on Earth
I am climbing up a volcano at an altitude of 19,500 feet. It is 3 AM. I haven’t slept in 21 hours. My guide and I are the only ones on the mountain. The only sounds I hear are unobstructed whistling winds and crunching into the glacier from my crampons and ice axe. The only sights I see are what my headlamp illuminates, mostly the rope connecting our two harnesses. Our mission is to summit before sunrise the highest point on Earth, the 20,500-foot Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador so that I can knock another item off my bucket list. A pre-sunrise summit is needed because a descent after the glacier’s snow and ice start to warm up would be too dangerous to attempt.
Every external piece of clothing and gear is now a layer of ice. My eyelashes are frozen. The wind is making my eyes water to the point I can barely see. Every step I take feels like I’m on my 1,000th lunge in a row, 1,001, 1,002, 1,003. I’m allowing 2-3 seconds to pass between each step to try and limit the overwhelming pooling of lactic acid buildup happening in my legs. I get a sense that I no longer have the benefit of light. I wave my hand in front of my face and see no light hitting my glove, my headlamp batteries must have died because of the cold. Oh well, I’ll have to go without. There are spare batteries in my bag but now is not the time to stop and take off a glove to try and replace the batteries. It would later be determined back down in base camp that my headlamp’s batteries never actually did die, but a baseball-sized chunk of ice formed around it not allowing any of its light to escape. I can see the rope and the headlamp from my guide in front of me so that will have to be how I navigate now.
My reserves are empty. I am feeling my body shutting down. My brain is foggy and confused. I have never been this high in altitude, with every slow step I am breaking a new record. With every slow step, I feel the effects of my brain and body receiving less and less oxygen. I feel liquid in my lungs, I know that could be serious, I’ll try to monitor that. I have a headache. My helmet is too small, or maybe my head is swelling? Does that happen? I’m not sure. Am I thinking clearly? My pace is slowing. My guide comes back and asks me if I’m good to continue. I can feel him analyzing me, making internal calculations on whether I can safely continue. I muster every ounce of concentration I can gather to hide my dizziness, exhaustion, and confusion and tell him I am good to continue.
I am looking straight down at my feet, focusing on one slow step at a time. Everything in my body and mind is telling me it is unsafe to continue climbing, turn around, head back down for coffee and eggs. There is something deep within though, I don’t know what, some force that will not allow me to stop. I don’t care if I collapse here and now, I will not turn around. I can manage one more step, I can manage one more step, I can manage one more step. I almost walk right into my guide who has stopped and turned around for some reason. I look up and he has his hand sticking up, I’m not sure why. I give a questionable shrug. He yells, I can barely hear him through the wind, “We made it, this is the summit!”
It's a few days later. I’m back in my little studio apartment here in Colorado. I feel proud I was able to accomplish that climb, but looking back I know that I disliked that level of danger. If I can help it, I would like to not feel those feelings again. I call my family and tell them about the climb. I tell them that I have no desire to climb any mountains like that again in the future, but my brother is not buying it. He tells me that I’m a thrill seeker; I assure him I’m not.
Another week passes. I start to feel I need something else on the horizon to pursue. I get on my computer and add “Climb all 53 Colorado 14ers” to my bucket list. A “14er” is Colorado slang for a mountain over 14,000 feet in elevation. Why do I feel like my mountaineering pursuit is incomplete after climbing to the highest point on earth? Why did I have such a change of heart after only one week of being settled back home?
A month passes. I am sitting on a couch with my brother in our family’s cabin in a Pennsylvania state forest. I tell him about my new goal. He laughs and says “You just told me you were done with these mountains, and now you’re saying you want to climb 53 more of them? And you tell me you are not a thrill seeker”. I chuckle but have no real response to offer.
It’s a week later. I’m back in Colorado walking my dog around my apartment complex. I’ve been contemplating why I had no response to my brother’s thrill seeker comment, even though I know it isn’t true. But what is true? I have one headphone in listening to an audiobook. The book is “Gates of Fire” by Steven Pressfield. It’s the story of the 300 Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae. In this scene, the Spartans are sitting around a campfire the night before the start of the battle discussing the concept of fear. One of them says “Even us veteran Spartans cobble our courage together on the spot, of rags and remnants. But fear is always there. Fear of disgracing the city, the king, the heroes of our lines”. Then it hit me. It wasn’t thrill-seeking or courage driving me to the top of the mountain and making me want to do it 53 more times. But it was fear itself, my fear of a life of regret.
That is why I am writing these words right now. I fear putting myself out there like this and attempting a new creative pursuit. But I am more scared of my potential regret later if I don’t at least try. Is that courage or just using my biggest fear in life to overcome smaller fears? Is it a good thing to do this? Is it bad? Neutral? I’m not sure, I still have to work that out.