Adventure Why?
I have a whole thing written on adventure someplace I will try to dredge up and send it along. It was written 15 years ago when I discovered some of this. I guess I wrote about this about 20 years ago too when I first realized that there was this alternate reality but did not know how to describe it except through terms of the road people I met while traveling around the country on my bicycle. That was the first place I learned to do this sort of thing. Adventure is different from just regular living or vacation or most anything a person normally does. When a person sets out on an adventure they often have a basic goal in mine and that keeps them moving in a direction even if it some lose direction. I have had friends who have ridden bicycles around the world, "traveled" around the world, traveled the western hemisphere, traveled the Americas, spent two years living and working in tropical research stations, climbing the highest peaks on the seven continents, and other lofty goals. Sometimes that goal can change. The purpose of the adventure is to experience being alive, all of the sensations that go along with it and to witness everything in life that people miss by living day to day in the life of time. On an adventure a person inhales up every minute like it was their last by putting them self into situations for which they are ill prepared, have no idea of the outcome, and that they leaves the ending up to the gods discretion. Everyday the sun comes up and the sun goes down, but what goes on in between is up for grabs. On the adventure all you can count on is the passing of one day to the next. Every emotion is valued and expected. Pain, and pleasure, comfort and torture, aggravation and tranquility are all valid and all expected and equally welcomed on an adventure. Nothing is run away from. Time doesn’t matter it moves differently.
When I heard about the Aconcagua trip I thought I didn’t want to do it because I really don’t like heights. I don’t like getting up on a roof. I dream about climbing, about being up on mountains and cliffs, about jumping off and flying or falling. I dream about trying to go up boulder cliffs. I like the physical challenge of climbing but I am also attracted to the terror I have of heights. I am attracted to climbing. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame and find myself hanging out on cliffs or out on trails that fade into little shelves of broken rock stuck to the edge of the face of a crumbly cliff hanging out over a 500 foot drop wondering how did I get myself into this mess and why am I here? I am scared and shaking at that point and if I think about the height and the fall and the rock, I can’t really go on. I have been at that point and not been able to go on. If I couldn’t go back what is left? Just stay there and die? Not an option. I always have gone on, pushed myself past that point of terror and somehow did what I couldn't do, which was often stupid and finished the "trail" or climb.
I was hiking/climbing with my brother and one other guy, Eric, in the Sierra Mountains right after this proposal for the trip to Aconcagua to see if I had it in me to really do a crazy climb. This was a summer hike of a couple of weeks out of Kings Canyon with a few Sierra Peaks involved. These are some of the 214 highest of most prominent peaks in the Sierra Mountains that have Journals at the top that people climb and then sign in to say they have been there. We got hung out on the wrong part of a peak and Eric, who was leading and an excellent climber, technical climber and all (I am not a technical climber V., just barely a scrambler IV. and a whimpy one at that). We got to a place where there was no way up but to trick out this one part. We didn’t have any equipment because all of the climbing was class IV or less. Here at this place we really needed protection, but hand none and the rock was all crumbly and shitty. It was beyond my capacity to really do as far as I was concerned. Eric knew I was tentative about going up but saw no other alternative except going back which was way to long a hike. Dennis was ok with it, he has done more than I have and isn’t such a whimp with heights. This is before I had done any climbs really when I was seeing if I had it in me to do Aconcagua. Eric scrambled up the first pitch to a safe ledge. Dennis made it up and Eric came down to help me. I started up scared to death and shaking, literally shaking the rock lose that I was holding onto. Eric said he learned to climb by climbing with his girl friend who is a dancer. She gave him the perspective of climbing as a dance. Eric said think of the climb differently. It’s a dance with the rock. Step, pull, look where your foot will go because the rock is shitty and is breaking, swing your foot before it breaks and while your foot is moving find the next hand hold. When you foot finds a perch start moving a hand and looking for a hand hold. Keep moving and shifting the weight moving up the hill and keeping the weight moving up and around to another place feeling the rock to keep the part that the breaking from letting go while another hand or foot is in transition. Dance with the rock, hear the music, feel the rhythm, move with it.
There was no other option. I could grab hold of some shitty rock shake it off with my trembling hands and come crashing down, which didn’t seem like a good option. Or I could try to think of the climb differently and do it like Eric said and do a Zen thing. Once starting up I had to go quickly or the rock and gravity would dictate the direction I would travel. Eric encourage from below and Dennis from above and I just moved up scared to death thinking of dancing with rocks, hot-footing it, more like the rock was hot and I had to hot-potato to the next place watching, a Zen thing, not a dance thing. Worked for me. There were no ropes and no protection on this climb/scramble and that is very dangerous and not really climbing, it is kind of in the realm of dumb. We did this push in two sprints, or two pitches (the length of two ropes) up sort of a shoot. There was a resting point halfway up.
Once on top of that three hundred feet or so which was about as far as I could go physically like that all out boogie up the rock without making a mistake, we found that surprise, surprise we had made yet another mistake. Our goal was to summit one of the Sierra Peaks, which are all named and numbered. Well this one had no book, just a straight cliff on the other side that dropped off about 1000 feet. I was laying flat on the knife-edge of the top of the rock asking Eric what we did now, because I was terrified that we would have to go down what we just went up. This Hog Back (knife edge of rock that fell away on both sides vertically) ran along for about 500 meters to a point that must have been the summit. Eric said we’d walk over there and check that out. Right walk over there and check it out. Again, I am laying flat on my stomach gripping the rock an arm on each side of the knife edge of rock, while my brother and Eric were standing looking around and talking about it without fear. Lifting my head caused me to get dizzy. What could I do just lie there and die? Big brother had to suck it up, “Oh, I’m… ok, just looking at this… ahhh… this… lichen here, it’s pretty cool that it’s growing way up here, yea, cool lichen.” “I think I will just crawl along here and look for some more of them.” I think we got down on one side of the cliff and scooted along so it wasn’t like tight rope walking or at least I did that, but I do remember thinking that there was no way I could stand up without something next to me to hold on to and since we were on top there was nothing to hold onto so I couldn’t stand up. When I sat up I felt like I would fall over. My fear of height somehow made it so when I stood up with nothing else around me I could not figure out exactly up and down so I wobbled. The rock we were standing on was uneven and there was nothing else higher than us for many miles since we were literally on the top of the highest mountain. I lost my balance trying to just stand there straight.
I had no sense of accomplishment at that point: I just wanted down. I could see no way down and just wanted a helicopter to come and take me down or to wake up from the dream and be down. Looking ahead all I could see was scary stuff and no better way down than what we just came up and that was a deadly way. I was pretty terrified and promised myself that I would not do this again. I remembered all the times I had gotten myself hung out like this in the past. I wondered why I hadn’t learned from that. There is a feeling inside my stomach or behind my stomach that swirls like a wave along my back, along my spine, coming forward at about my heart and circulating towards my ribs, splashing down to my solar plexus then rotating back again in a tight circle of anxiety or energy at times like this. Hung out is how I have always described this sensation since I was a little kid because it is me alone with no attachment, exposed, not able to get a grasp on a solution no matter how well prepared I seem to have made myself before hand or how hard I seem to work at a solution. I am afraid, but it is not just of dying it is of something else. The solution is not along the hog back there 500 meter ahead on the impossible ridge, but right there in front of me. I have to harness all of the emotions and gain control and do something. Each thing I do that brings me one step close to the goal is one less step that has to be taken even if it is just a half baby step. One half-baby step is all I have to muster to be 499.5 meter from the end which is closer than before.
On that little adventure I did find lichens and I did crawl along looking for them. Actually the lichens were very cool, blue-green in color and almost iridescent. I also found that I could just crouch along the edge of the ridge and walk along the edge without standing and balancing and that gave me hand holds. When we made it to the actual summit at the end of the 500 meters and signed the book the way down was a cakewalk, so to speak, compared to the death climb. We jumped from boulder to boulder, perch to perch. It was fun because we were coming down. Every step down was lighter and closer to the ground. I felt relief and accomplishment. I felt I had overcome something I was afraid of and I also told myself I didn’t have to do that again because I made my point. I talked to Eric and Dennis about being terrified; I didn’t try to say I wasn’t terrified.
I came back from this hiking/climbing trip thinking that if I got down to South America after spending a year and a half training having four people depending on me and I freak out on them, I would be a long way from home and nobody would be going to drive down and get me: Better be sure. I talked it over with Joann and she said that Aconcagua was a “walk up” and we would do shake downs before so we would be sure. So I met the team an Oriental rice bowl fast food restaurant in Modesto that was closed down the next day when 15 people came down with food poisoning. Bad omen? This was crazy talk they were saying, but I liked it. I like being part of it. They were including me. I was their bike man. They sought me out in all of Modesto because they knew I was the right age, in the right physical condition, and knew a shit load about bicycles. They came to me! How could I say no? I felt pillaged and Adrian is so crazy: he is the pied piper of Adventure anyone would follow him. Insanity and everyone agreed. Our plan for training was so cool. Climb all the 14,000+ mountains in California and do them in the worst conditions possible and even take our bikes down as many as we could sneak them onto. One climb a month or some training with a major training every other month. High altitude stuff ever week prior to leaving with lots of cold weather stuff prior to leaving. The climb was a year and a half away. There was so much that could happen that the chances of it actually happening were slim to none in my book and the training would be fun to do. I could always bail on the thing and give some lame excuse is what I thought, but I also thought I would hang in there as long as I could. One step at a time. I would go as far as I could get myself to go. I would do as much as I could do.
The group of four Adrian, Joann, Brian, Myself were the original team. Adrian said he didn’t need to train with us much because of a lot of things, but would get with us some as time permitted. The three of us needed to follow a plan of training he kind of laid out and have meetings a couple of times a month with all four of us to make sure we were all on track and all still were clear on our plans. I felt like I had joined an elite team which I had I guess. We all had assignments for our meetings that were held at pubs, microbrewers, and pizza places that had brew (I don’t drink beer, but the other do). We all stayed in shape and got in better shape. Our training climbs and rides were savage and bonding experiences and a kick to do. Fun with friends like kids out playing. I got to know these people pretty well spending a weekend a month getting “hung out” on another mountain some place and laughing until I thought I would die at the situation we would find ourselves in, grown adults getting stuck like a bunch of dumb kids. It was an excellent year and a half getting ready one step at a time. These were people I could count on, friends. People I trusted my life to once a month at least and often trusted my life to on the rides and other times as well. On climbs it was real life and death: trust me or trust me not. People often don’t get into situations like that with their friends ever or only once or twice in the life of the friendship. We did that many times a weekend once a month every month for a year and a half. That builds a special kind of relationship.
You wanted to know about Shasta. That was actually our last climb before leaving for Chile. We left about three weeks after that climb. There wasn’t enough time to really think about that climb or even thaw out from it before we were on a plane winging our way to some really big hills. My tent still had dirt from Shasta in it when I set it up on Aconcagua. By that time I had gotten use to the idea of going up the hill (a mountain) a step at a time it was time to go to South America. On Shasta I was very nervous with that churning energy in my stomach. The weather was the big deal on this trip. We hadn’t faced that on any of the other trips before. Adrian is an expert on weather, but we also had an avalanche to go along with the weather and they are more unpredictable. I just didn’t know about the cold since I had not been around the cold much. Adrian has sort of a lighthearted cavalier air about him, but he is deadly serious about adventure and no one dies or loses toes or fingers. When we needed to know things to keep us safe he told us and let us know why and for that I was grateful and felt safe. I would not have felt safe with just anyone. Still living out there on the edge of what human life can endure a mistake is fatal so it is very edgy, and I it is tense always thinking about the equipment and stuff I have with me and where it is. As Adrian says, “On a big climb, you take only what you need so if you lose one thing, you could die: know what you have and where it is.” Imagine that being on your mind or in the back of your mind all the time. Someone says, “Hey, can I get the knife?” You are in charge of the Swiss Army Knife you had better have it handy or know where it is. If you left it on the rock back at the last rest stop and it the temperature just dropped 40º and iced up and the knife is needed to cut a knot on a crampon because hands are too cold to work you are going to kill someone through your forgetfulness. The crampon may not get put on before your friend’s hand freezes or at all because the knot can’t be untied, so the friend can not move anywhere because it is too icy without crampon, so your friend will die unless you carry him or her which you can’t. They may lose their fingers because they had to fiddle with a knot without gloves because the knife was not there. Even that, frozen fingers, may cause them to go into shock and die. Your friend may get pissed and kill you because that is what altitude does to people. It is deadly serious, life and death, no joke every minute over a certain altitude, under a certain temperature or hung out in certain places.
With all of the snow on Shasta our trip was turning into one of these near death adventures. We had heard about a guy earlier that year that had crawled out of his tent in a snowstorm without putting on his clothes and before nature got done he was so hypothermic he walked the wrong way back to his tent and died. We had a laptop computer and a cell phone with Internet and got satellite pictures of the storm coming in so we saw what was coming and got prepared which was good. Adrian prepared us well. We were outfitted well with clothes. I liked the challenge of the exercise to see how hard I could work out before I collapsed. That part was fun. Post holing up the mountain like a machine was fun. I just turned myself on and just kept moving like a machine going without feeling the pain or the tired like the machine would do. I didn’t think of the distance down or anything. What scared me was the dark, the fog, getting lost, the wind, the snow, and the cliffs. I really didn’t trust Adrian’s navigation at night in the dark, the fog, the snow with only one barely working light and no real trail since the wind had blown it away. I was afraid we would fall off a cliff in the dark. I was so happy when we turned around. I have a terrible fear of getting lost. That is because I don’t have a good sense of direction I think. I sure didn’t know where I was up there on Shasta. Couldn’t see in the fog, the snow and the dark.
Then there is the tired factor. How tired can a person be? If I got to the limit and I was at the top of Shasta, how would I get back? How would I know when I was just tired enough to have enough energy to get back? That worried me when we reached the shoot up Red Banks. I was wasted royally and decided not to break trail anymore. I was tentative about getting back at that time but was not going to say anything. Push on, push on. When we turned around I got this second wind and though I could run back to the tents. Actually that lasted about ten feet. I soon was overcome with exhaustion. When we found the tents I was again overcome with a second wind and rebuilt my tent and got my place set up to sleep. I was feeling great. The next morning when Adrian said we had to get out of there because there was too much snow and an avalanche was coming if the next storm hit before we got out I was elated. I felt a real sense of accomplishment having seen that my limit is far beyond what I think it is. I saw that I can take much more than I was aware of. I figured out that cold was not my enemy and I could dance with it and live with it nicely enough. Respect is all that is needed of the elements. I knew that I could push things with my equipment and get a lot out of it and I could push things with my body and get a lot more out of that too. The line and the limit had been set way out there for me and that made me very comfortable. Faith in Adrian also went way up. I saw that Adrian was able to make rational decisions and pull out when the going really got deadly. I could count on him.
People have been given a gift of future and past conception. They can look to the future and predict things that might happen and prepare for that and this gives them an advantage over most of the other thinking beings. Memories of the past gives them the advantage of storage of information and learning from past mistakes and mistakes from many generation past if they can communicate that information. Unfortunately it has led to people living in the future and the past. Most people in our society spend their time preparing for the future, getting ready for things that will never really happen or that will happen whether they prepare for them or not. They also go over and over memories of the past as if they are important, changing them and reliving them not extracting useful information that will make the present more livable. The only moment there is to live is the present moment. Most people miss that present moment trying to get the future just right or adjust the memories of the past to fit some reality they have in mind. They miss the present.
Life as I see it is moving along a track like a train. We cannot really do much about it. We can occasionally change the track we are on by hitting a switch at just the right time and diverting our course. That might take a future look and a desire to move in a different direction. A lot of people think they will have big changes and go here or there, but they really have no affect on the course of their life unless they make the changes at just the right time. The change they make is always small like a train switching tracks it takes a while to head in the new direction.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down and what happens in between in up for grabs. We have no control over it. If we live in the present and ride the train we can relax and just enjoy the ride and notice everything that goes on in our lives. It all makes sense and all fits together. Rather than fighting against it we can just live our lives in the present and feel every moment for what it is. When we do see that we have new goals and objectives we can look ahead with this gift of ours and look for switches in the track and make those subtle changes that put us on a new track that will lead us eventually to a new direction. We should not confuse the straightness or curves of the tracks with changes: Tracks are not always straight. Some people think that when their train goes around a curve they have made a change in their life or that their direction in their life has been altered for some unknown reason. If they would just relax and ride the moment they would see that no switch has been made and the curve will straighten out and the direction overall will be back on course or maybe it won't and they will have to switch tracks. If they want to go in a new direction then just keeping in mind the new direction will allow the activation of the switches as they come up so the rider of the train can still live in the moment and ride their train. The goal of life is to just relax and enjoy the ride not to fight against the ride because that is futile. Living in the present is riding the train in a relaxed way.
Adventures are a time when a direction is set and the train is ridden day by day. Every day, every moment is lived for the moment and all of the things that happen are allowed to happen. The whole cascade of events unfolds naturally without interference and surprisingly life goes on and surprisingly the train gets to the station at the end. What is seen along the way is always unbelievable. It is indescribable because it is unanticipated. No one can paint a picture like an adventure or write what could happen or what might happen because things are just that strange. Living day to day, moment to moment, each moment is unique and has never happened before and never will happen. Each moment is to be savored, not even remembered, just enjoyed and passed through to the next and the next and so on. Time is of little consequence. People of the world of time are like cardboard cutouts and cartoon figures that invade an adventure. They come and go as extras, like billboards and signs along the way. People outside of time glow and are plain to see. They show up all over the place. Comrades on the road to reality. It takes a month or so to really get into the world of adventure and to be there. Once you have been in this world you can't go back to the world of time, not really back knowing that this other reality exists. I am always drawn to the world of adventure, to the real world. Living in the moment.
When I heard about the Aconcagua trip I thought I didn’t want to do it because I really don’t like heights. I don’t like getting up on a roof. I dream about climbing, about being up on mountains and cliffs, about jumping off and flying or falling. I dream about trying to go up boulder cliffs. I like the physical challenge of climbing but I am also attracted to the terror I have of heights. I am attracted to climbing. I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame and find myself hanging out on cliffs or out on trails that fade into little shelves of broken rock stuck to the edge of the face of a crumbly cliff hanging out over a 500 foot drop wondering how did I get myself into this mess and why am I here? I am scared and shaking at that point and if I think about the height and the fall and the rock, I can’t really go on. I have been at that point and not been able to go on. If I couldn’t go back what is left? Just stay there and die? Not an option. I always have gone on, pushed myself past that point of terror and somehow did what I couldn't do, which was often stupid and finished the "trail" or climb.
I was hiking/climbing with my brother and one other guy, Eric, in the Sierra Mountains right after this proposal for the trip to Aconcagua to see if I had it in me to really do a crazy climb. This was a summer hike of a couple of weeks out of Kings Canyon with a few Sierra Peaks involved. These are some of the 214 highest of most prominent peaks in the Sierra Mountains that have Journals at the top that people climb and then sign in to say they have been there. We got hung out on the wrong part of a peak and Eric, who was leading and an excellent climber, technical climber and all (I am not a technical climber V., just barely a scrambler IV. and a whimpy one at that). We got to a place where there was no way up but to trick out this one part. We didn’t have any equipment because all of the climbing was class IV or less. Here at this place we really needed protection, but hand none and the rock was all crumbly and shitty. It was beyond my capacity to really do as far as I was concerned. Eric knew I was tentative about going up but saw no other alternative except going back which was way to long a hike. Dennis was ok with it, he has done more than I have and isn’t such a whimp with heights. This is before I had done any climbs really when I was seeing if I had it in me to do Aconcagua. Eric scrambled up the first pitch to a safe ledge. Dennis made it up and Eric came down to help me. I started up scared to death and shaking, literally shaking the rock lose that I was holding onto. Eric said he learned to climb by climbing with his girl friend who is a dancer. She gave him the perspective of climbing as a dance. Eric said think of the climb differently. It’s a dance with the rock. Step, pull, look where your foot will go because the rock is shitty and is breaking, swing your foot before it breaks and while your foot is moving find the next hand hold. When you foot finds a perch start moving a hand and looking for a hand hold. Keep moving and shifting the weight moving up the hill and keeping the weight moving up and around to another place feeling the rock to keep the part that the breaking from letting go while another hand or foot is in transition. Dance with the rock, hear the music, feel the rhythm, move with it.
There was no other option. I could grab hold of some shitty rock shake it off with my trembling hands and come crashing down, which didn’t seem like a good option. Or I could try to think of the climb differently and do it like Eric said and do a Zen thing. Once starting up I had to go quickly or the rock and gravity would dictate the direction I would travel. Eric encourage from below and Dennis from above and I just moved up scared to death thinking of dancing with rocks, hot-footing it, more like the rock was hot and I had to hot-potato to the next place watching, a Zen thing, not a dance thing. Worked for me. There were no ropes and no protection on this climb/scramble and that is very dangerous and not really climbing, it is kind of in the realm of dumb. We did this push in two sprints, or two pitches (the length of two ropes) up sort of a shoot. There was a resting point halfway up.
Once on top of that three hundred feet or so which was about as far as I could go physically like that all out boogie up the rock without making a mistake, we found that surprise, surprise we had made yet another mistake. Our goal was to summit one of the Sierra Peaks, which are all named and numbered. Well this one had no book, just a straight cliff on the other side that dropped off about 1000 feet. I was laying flat on the knife-edge of the top of the rock asking Eric what we did now, because I was terrified that we would have to go down what we just went up. This Hog Back (knife edge of rock that fell away on both sides vertically) ran along for about 500 meters to a point that must have been the summit. Eric said we’d walk over there and check that out. Right walk over there and check it out. Again, I am laying flat on my stomach gripping the rock an arm on each side of the knife edge of rock, while my brother and Eric were standing looking around and talking about it without fear. Lifting my head caused me to get dizzy. What could I do just lie there and die? Big brother had to suck it up, “Oh, I’m… ok, just looking at this… ahhh… this… lichen here, it’s pretty cool that it’s growing way up here, yea, cool lichen.” “I think I will just crawl along here and look for some more of them.” I think we got down on one side of the cliff and scooted along so it wasn’t like tight rope walking or at least I did that, but I do remember thinking that there was no way I could stand up without something next to me to hold on to and since we were on top there was nothing to hold onto so I couldn’t stand up. When I sat up I felt like I would fall over. My fear of height somehow made it so when I stood up with nothing else around me I could not figure out exactly up and down so I wobbled. The rock we were standing on was uneven and there was nothing else higher than us for many miles since we were literally on the top of the highest mountain. I lost my balance trying to just stand there straight.
I had no sense of accomplishment at that point: I just wanted down. I could see no way down and just wanted a helicopter to come and take me down or to wake up from the dream and be down. Looking ahead all I could see was scary stuff and no better way down than what we just came up and that was a deadly way. I was pretty terrified and promised myself that I would not do this again. I remembered all the times I had gotten myself hung out like this in the past. I wondered why I hadn’t learned from that. There is a feeling inside my stomach or behind my stomach that swirls like a wave along my back, along my spine, coming forward at about my heart and circulating towards my ribs, splashing down to my solar plexus then rotating back again in a tight circle of anxiety or energy at times like this. Hung out is how I have always described this sensation since I was a little kid because it is me alone with no attachment, exposed, not able to get a grasp on a solution no matter how well prepared I seem to have made myself before hand or how hard I seem to work at a solution. I am afraid, but it is not just of dying it is of something else. The solution is not along the hog back there 500 meter ahead on the impossible ridge, but right there in front of me. I have to harness all of the emotions and gain control and do something. Each thing I do that brings me one step close to the goal is one less step that has to be taken even if it is just a half baby step. One half-baby step is all I have to muster to be 499.5 meter from the end which is closer than before.
On that little adventure I did find lichens and I did crawl along looking for them. Actually the lichens were very cool, blue-green in color and almost iridescent. I also found that I could just crouch along the edge of the ridge and walk along the edge without standing and balancing and that gave me hand holds. When we made it to the actual summit at the end of the 500 meters and signed the book the way down was a cakewalk, so to speak, compared to the death climb. We jumped from boulder to boulder, perch to perch. It was fun because we were coming down. Every step down was lighter and closer to the ground. I felt relief and accomplishment. I felt I had overcome something I was afraid of and I also told myself I didn’t have to do that again because I made my point. I talked to Eric and Dennis about being terrified; I didn’t try to say I wasn’t terrified.
I came back from this hiking/climbing trip thinking that if I got down to South America after spending a year and a half training having four people depending on me and I freak out on them, I would be a long way from home and nobody would be going to drive down and get me: Better be sure. I talked it over with Joann and she said that Aconcagua was a “walk up” and we would do shake downs before so we would be sure. So I met the team an Oriental rice bowl fast food restaurant in Modesto that was closed down the next day when 15 people came down with food poisoning. Bad omen? This was crazy talk they were saying, but I liked it. I like being part of it. They were including me. I was their bike man. They sought me out in all of Modesto because they knew I was the right age, in the right physical condition, and knew a shit load about bicycles. They came to me! How could I say no? I felt pillaged and Adrian is so crazy: he is the pied piper of Adventure anyone would follow him. Insanity and everyone agreed. Our plan for training was so cool. Climb all the 14,000+ mountains in California and do them in the worst conditions possible and even take our bikes down as many as we could sneak them onto. One climb a month or some training with a major training every other month. High altitude stuff ever week prior to leaving with lots of cold weather stuff prior to leaving. The climb was a year and a half away. There was so much that could happen that the chances of it actually happening were slim to none in my book and the training would be fun to do. I could always bail on the thing and give some lame excuse is what I thought, but I also thought I would hang in there as long as I could. One step at a time. I would go as far as I could get myself to go. I would do as much as I could do.
The group of four Adrian, Joann, Brian, Myself were the original team. Adrian said he didn’t need to train with us much because of a lot of things, but would get with us some as time permitted. The three of us needed to follow a plan of training he kind of laid out and have meetings a couple of times a month with all four of us to make sure we were all on track and all still were clear on our plans. I felt like I had joined an elite team which I had I guess. We all had assignments for our meetings that were held at pubs, microbrewers, and pizza places that had brew (I don’t drink beer, but the other do). We all stayed in shape and got in better shape. Our training climbs and rides were savage and bonding experiences and a kick to do. Fun with friends like kids out playing. I got to know these people pretty well spending a weekend a month getting “hung out” on another mountain some place and laughing until I thought I would die at the situation we would find ourselves in, grown adults getting stuck like a bunch of dumb kids. It was an excellent year and a half getting ready one step at a time. These were people I could count on, friends. People I trusted my life to once a month at least and often trusted my life to on the rides and other times as well. On climbs it was real life and death: trust me or trust me not. People often don’t get into situations like that with their friends ever or only once or twice in the life of the friendship. We did that many times a weekend once a month every month for a year and a half. That builds a special kind of relationship.
You wanted to know about Shasta. That was actually our last climb before leaving for Chile. We left about three weeks after that climb. There wasn’t enough time to really think about that climb or even thaw out from it before we were on a plane winging our way to some really big hills. My tent still had dirt from Shasta in it when I set it up on Aconcagua. By that time I had gotten use to the idea of going up the hill (a mountain) a step at a time it was time to go to South America. On Shasta I was very nervous with that churning energy in my stomach. The weather was the big deal on this trip. We hadn’t faced that on any of the other trips before. Adrian is an expert on weather, but we also had an avalanche to go along with the weather and they are more unpredictable. I just didn’t know about the cold since I had not been around the cold much. Adrian has sort of a lighthearted cavalier air about him, but he is deadly serious about adventure and no one dies or loses toes or fingers. When we needed to know things to keep us safe he told us and let us know why and for that I was grateful and felt safe. I would not have felt safe with just anyone. Still living out there on the edge of what human life can endure a mistake is fatal so it is very edgy, and I it is tense always thinking about the equipment and stuff I have with me and where it is. As Adrian says, “On a big climb, you take only what you need so if you lose one thing, you could die: know what you have and where it is.” Imagine that being on your mind or in the back of your mind all the time. Someone says, “Hey, can I get the knife?” You are in charge of the Swiss Army Knife you had better have it handy or know where it is. If you left it on the rock back at the last rest stop and it the temperature just dropped 40º and iced up and the knife is needed to cut a knot on a crampon because hands are too cold to work you are going to kill someone through your forgetfulness. The crampon may not get put on before your friend’s hand freezes or at all because the knot can’t be untied, so the friend can not move anywhere because it is too icy without crampon, so your friend will die unless you carry him or her which you can’t. They may lose their fingers because they had to fiddle with a knot without gloves because the knife was not there. Even that, frozen fingers, may cause them to go into shock and die. Your friend may get pissed and kill you because that is what altitude does to people. It is deadly serious, life and death, no joke every minute over a certain altitude, under a certain temperature or hung out in certain places.
With all of the snow on Shasta our trip was turning into one of these near death adventures. We had heard about a guy earlier that year that had crawled out of his tent in a snowstorm without putting on his clothes and before nature got done he was so hypothermic he walked the wrong way back to his tent and died. We had a laptop computer and a cell phone with Internet and got satellite pictures of the storm coming in so we saw what was coming and got prepared which was good. Adrian prepared us well. We were outfitted well with clothes. I liked the challenge of the exercise to see how hard I could work out before I collapsed. That part was fun. Post holing up the mountain like a machine was fun. I just turned myself on and just kept moving like a machine going without feeling the pain or the tired like the machine would do. I didn’t think of the distance down or anything. What scared me was the dark, the fog, getting lost, the wind, the snow, and the cliffs. I really didn’t trust Adrian’s navigation at night in the dark, the fog, the snow with only one barely working light and no real trail since the wind had blown it away. I was afraid we would fall off a cliff in the dark. I was so happy when we turned around. I have a terrible fear of getting lost. That is because I don’t have a good sense of direction I think. I sure didn’t know where I was up there on Shasta. Couldn’t see in the fog, the snow and the dark.
Then there is the tired factor. How tired can a person be? If I got to the limit and I was at the top of Shasta, how would I get back? How would I know when I was just tired enough to have enough energy to get back? That worried me when we reached the shoot up Red Banks. I was wasted royally and decided not to break trail anymore. I was tentative about getting back at that time but was not going to say anything. Push on, push on. When we turned around I got this second wind and though I could run back to the tents. Actually that lasted about ten feet. I soon was overcome with exhaustion. When we found the tents I was again overcome with a second wind and rebuilt my tent and got my place set up to sleep. I was feeling great. The next morning when Adrian said we had to get out of there because there was too much snow and an avalanche was coming if the next storm hit before we got out I was elated. I felt a real sense of accomplishment having seen that my limit is far beyond what I think it is. I saw that I can take much more than I was aware of. I figured out that cold was not my enemy and I could dance with it and live with it nicely enough. Respect is all that is needed of the elements. I knew that I could push things with my equipment and get a lot out of it and I could push things with my body and get a lot more out of that too. The line and the limit had been set way out there for me and that made me very comfortable. Faith in Adrian also went way up. I saw that Adrian was able to make rational decisions and pull out when the going really got deadly. I could count on him.
People have been given a gift of future and past conception. They can look to the future and predict things that might happen and prepare for that and this gives them an advantage over most of the other thinking beings. Memories of the past gives them the advantage of storage of information and learning from past mistakes and mistakes from many generation past if they can communicate that information. Unfortunately it has led to people living in the future and the past. Most people in our society spend their time preparing for the future, getting ready for things that will never really happen or that will happen whether they prepare for them or not. They also go over and over memories of the past as if they are important, changing them and reliving them not extracting useful information that will make the present more livable. The only moment there is to live is the present moment. Most people miss that present moment trying to get the future just right or adjust the memories of the past to fit some reality they have in mind. They miss the present.
Life as I see it is moving along a track like a train. We cannot really do much about it. We can occasionally change the track we are on by hitting a switch at just the right time and diverting our course. That might take a future look and a desire to move in a different direction. A lot of people think they will have big changes and go here or there, but they really have no affect on the course of their life unless they make the changes at just the right time. The change they make is always small like a train switching tracks it takes a while to head in the new direction.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down and what happens in between in up for grabs. We have no control over it. If we live in the present and ride the train we can relax and just enjoy the ride and notice everything that goes on in our lives. It all makes sense and all fits together. Rather than fighting against it we can just live our lives in the present and feel every moment for what it is. When we do see that we have new goals and objectives we can look ahead with this gift of ours and look for switches in the track and make those subtle changes that put us on a new track that will lead us eventually to a new direction. We should not confuse the straightness or curves of the tracks with changes: Tracks are not always straight. Some people think that when their train goes around a curve they have made a change in their life or that their direction in their life has been altered for some unknown reason. If they would just relax and ride the moment they would see that no switch has been made and the curve will straighten out and the direction overall will be back on course or maybe it won't and they will have to switch tracks. If they want to go in a new direction then just keeping in mind the new direction will allow the activation of the switches as they come up so the rider of the train can still live in the moment and ride their train. The goal of life is to just relax and enjoy the ride not to fight against the ride because that is futile. Living in the present is riding the train in a relaxed way.
Adventures are a time when a direction is set and the train is ridden day by day. Every day, every moment is lived for the moment and all of the things that happen are allowed to happen. The whole cascade of events unfolds naturally without interference and surprisingly life goes on and surprisingly the train gets to the station at the end. What is seen along the way is always unbelievable. It is indescribable because it is unanticipated. No one can paint a picture like an adventure or write what could happen or what might happen because things are just that strange. Living day to day, moment to moment, each moment is unique and has never happened before and never will happen. Each moment is to be savored, not even remembered, just enjoyed and passed through to the next and the next and so on. Time is of little consequence. People of the world of time are like cardboard cutouts and cartoon figures that invade an adventure. They come and go as extras, like billboards and signs along the way. People outside of time glow and are plain to see. They show up all over the place. Comrades on the road to reality. It takes a month or so to really get into the world of adventure and to be there. Once you have been in this world you can't go back to the world of time, not really back knowing that this other reality exists. I am always drawn to the world of adventure, to the real world. Living in the moment.
posted by meters1600 at 8:52 PM
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