To Have an Objective

I have always found that I can easily set goals for myself in a career oriented or academic domain, however when it comes to my life outdoors, I have remained quiet and stagnant. I believe that this is partially because I fear that I will not be able to put in enough time and effort to achieve the goals that I set for myself.

I have noticed that this fear has grown in size and that I have carried it with me throughout the duration of this trip - so what if I climbed for a month and a half straight in various spots all over the country if when I return to my hometown in the Berkshires, I will barely have enough time to climb just once a week at an indoor gym an hour away?

There is a key sentiment that I ought to apply here: If it is something that is important to you, you will make the time to prepare for it, train for it, do it, etc. But this means sacrifices and hard work - which usually I gravitate towards, but how can I adjust my schedule and lifestyle to include my love of the outdoors? To feel alive, I need to be on the sharp end, pushing my boundaries so that I can grow physically, emotionally and mentally.

Something beautiful about climbing outdoors and reaching for increasingly larger objectives is that the engineer in me geeks out at all rope systems, processes and efforts to increase efficiency. Both the Advanced Multipitch clinic up the Horns of Satan and the CAMP Light and Fast Alpine clinic proved to me that I have the basic skillset required to be successful in an alpine environment. Before you get onto the wall, there is a handful of decisions to make - How much time are we expecting to take on this route? How much water should we bring? How much food should we bring? How much and what kind of gear should we bring? If we have to bail, are both members of the team adequately prepared to work through the series of questions that may arise so that we can make an educated decision together? When tackling a long, multipitch day, one needs to be in sync with their partner in order to effectively transition gear from one person to another. Pay attention to the rope the first time you coil it so that when it comes time to dish it out for your partner, there will not be a whisper of concern in your mind that a knot or a tangle will interrupt you. Anticipate the possibilities three or four steps ahead with every piece of protection you place and anchor you build so that you are eliminating any unnecessary placements, but maximizing the safety of yourself and your partner. Consider what is an acceptable level of risk for every scenario you encounter - the more times you put yourself in this environment, the more experience you will have under your belt to make a quick and timely decision. Increased efficiency with respect to equipment to lead to a reduction in time spent creating a system is what every engineer thrives off of - it's possibly why so many engineers love this sport.

An excellent lesson that I learned during our weekend guided by Nate Smith was what if you shifted focus away from the gear and "what if" scenarios and instead focused on your fitness and your skillset. To put it mathematically, say you were climbing a 15 pitch climb. Estimate about 30 minutes per pitch for both you and your partner and maybe 12 minutes for transition. What if you had practiced your rope coiling so frequently and your knots and anchor systems so many times that instead of 12 minutes at every transition, you only took 7. You just cut down a 10.5 hour day to a 9.25 hour day. Then consider that both of you had trained for the long approach in and long approach out, cutting at least a half an hour off each end? On paper, it may not seem like much of a difference, but when you lack the efficiency and agility of a more seasoned or thoughtful climber and you are returning to your car after a 13 hour day and curling into your sleeping bag at 3am, you are going to hope to be able to get through a similar climb much faster the next time you do it. Fitness and skills are equally as important if not more important to your success and timeliness in the mountains as what you bring with you.

At the conclusion of the Salt Lake Climbing Festival, I was so motivated to get back out there and practice all the skills we had just learned that I agreed to climb with a friend from the clinic. The first lesson learned from this day was that we should have both been crystal clear about what our expectations were before even getting in the car to head to the crag, because they were not the same. Our differing expectations and our combined circumstances led us to have a mucky head space - neither of us thinking straight or communicating effectively because we had other problems and other things nagging on the back of our minds. As a result, we had a relatively dogged day - a long approach and a long descent over dirty, shifty talus fields only to spend half as much time climbing a low grade slab. Thankfully, though I was relatively frustrated for a majority of the day, our conversation about the need to be honest and transparent about our objectives before climbing with a new partner made the day worth it. It was a learning experience for both of us and though I did not always enjoy it in the moment, that's why they call climbing "Type 2" fun ;).

In any case, when I came down from climbing the West Slabs, I realized that the only way I was going to truly take as much as I could get out of every climbing trip would be to have a focus and to train. I have to do my research, read about climbs, read about destinations and get to the gym to prepare. Without setting these goals, my climbing has been more or less empty of ambition - enjoyable and occasionally challenging, but otherwise lacking passion. The last climb that I set out in my mind to tackle was Skywalker in Squamish and that was Week 1 of my climbing trip. Again, the fear had set into me - before leaving for my roadtrip, I never cracked open a guidebook and never made any plans for climbs I would have to push myself to complete. I did not want to spend hours daydreaming about climbs that I could do if I was not going to put the time in to be ready for them. While I have loved every minute of the climbing I have done these past two months, I know that I am capable of more. It's alright - everything in time, right?

Call this the first significant lesson learned from my trip - to have an objective is a healthy and genuine way to attain fulfillment and stretch yourself to reach goals previously unforeseen. Without objectives, what are you really reaching for? It would be like waving haphazardly at holds above your head without looking at them or charging into a 5k with no training but being angry at yourself for not having a better time. To have an objective is to make the most out of the sand as it slips through the hour glass. To have an objective is to have meaning. To reach an objective is...