Intuition and Desire

Suffering loomed on the western horizon. Paul and I were approaching Irene's Arête, our last objective of the trip, and my ideal forecast did not call for clouds, rain, hail, lightning or even doubt. While the clouds blew through and didn't amount to much more than a brief shower, my doubt accumulated. The thought of climbing through, or waiting out, another storm on the side of a route, did not sit well with me. After two relatively big storms on Wolf's Head and the Upper Exum, I really wasn't liking what I saw through the high mountain passes blowing our way.
Of course weather is always an uncertainty climbing on the eastern side of cliffs and big ranges, but add to that our lack of a solid cell signal limiting our ability to get a reliable forecast and the uncertainty in the sky builds in your gut...at least it does with me. When feelings like that surface for me, I tend to over analyze. Perhaps I was just scared. Perhaps I was just exhausted. Or perhaps I was really trying to trust my intuition. I'd had similar premonitions before getting on Wolf's Head and the Grand, but I'd suppressed them enough to allow us to continue upward and push through the adversity we would face. This time, I wasn't ready to do that. I kept hemming and hawing, internally and externally until Paul recognized my reluctance.
"Dude, do you want to bail? Cause it seems like you want to bail." I nodded my head. I was working up toward a decision.
"Yeah," I replied. "I think I want to bail."
We waited it out for another 40 minutes or so, but my mind was already made up. I felt bad for not allowing Paul this opportunity to climb a route I know he really wanted, but it wouldn't work if we weren't on the same page. We started the hike back to camp and into the sunshine. The majority of the clouds had blown through, and the route looked perfect. But by the time we arrived at camp and pulled our sleeping pads out of the tent to catch some rays, a few sprinkles turned into a steady rain for the next half hour and sent us to the shelter of our tent. I felt a little better, but I knew that the rain wouldn't have been a big deal if we'd kept going up instead of down.

Bailing is always tough. I battle with feelings of fear, discouragement, disappointment, and lack of mental fortitude. I try and balance those feelings with other, more positive things though. Climbing, like life, is all about learning-about self, others and the environment. I also know we get caught up in comparing our abilities and exploits to others. I strive to learn more and compare less. Those feelings of discouragement and disappoint really only materialize for me when I think of what other people would do in my situation. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. I climb (or don't climb in this instance) for me.

So now that Paul and I are sitting on a bus, heading home on our last leg of our travels, we know there are a lot more routes out there that we want to climb. We will always temper our desire with our intuition, as both are key aspects of staying safe and staying strong in the mountains as well as in our friendship.  B. T.

Photo taken from: Clouds365