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| Gazing into the lens of past ice seasons and considering what is in store. Photo credit: Alysse Anton |
Last year was likely the best season
of my ice life. I enjoyed such a stellar season, both in terms of
guiding and in terms of personal climbing that it prompts me to lean
back, shake out, and ponder why—after all, it's much less the
climbing that I seek in the ice, than the lens on life that this
translucent and ephemeral substance provides me. So, taking my tools
out of the closet and strapping on crampons for this season's ice,
it'd be wise to reflect upon why. After all, the mind is a muscle—as
vital to effective ice climbing as calves and triceps. So, as the
leaves wither and we await first ice, as I do my lock-offs, calf
raises, and tricep extensions to prepare my body for another season
of ice, it's also wise to pay heed to the brain that this body
carries around. Reflecting on last season, here's a couple of
concepts that highlight the learning that stretched my brain muscle
last season:
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| Starting last season in the Blind Fate Amphitheater, Smugglers Notch, with Mammut Ambassador Alden Pellett. Photo credit: Kel Rossiter |
Concept: Don't Just Look Where the
Light Is
Martin was clearly struggling—and it
wasn't like him. True, it was his first outing of the season, but
the previous season he'd confidently led several Smugglers Notch WI3
pitches and climbed Lake Willoughby WI4 clean, but now, climbing the
East Face of Mt. Willard, I was baffled. His feet sputtered and
skidded on the ice like he'd forgotten to don crampons.
Kick—pop!...hang.
I checked out his foot technique and
stance—it looked good. We checked out his crampons—sharpened to
laser edges—Martin is an efficiency engineer, an Austrian...and
zealous about sharpening. It wasn't until later in the day that I
glanced at his tools. “Martin, looks like you snapped a pick,” I
was about to comment, but then I noticed the other tool was the same
way. Turns out, Martin's zealousness with sharpening had rendered
his picks stumps of their former selves. Suddenly it was clear: his
foot work was fine, but in order to understand why his feet kept
popping out, we had to look at the impact his filed-off picks were
having on his upper body. Those filed-off picks had no purchase.
Feeling that insecurity, he pulled his upper body way too far into
the wall. Consequently, his crampons were forced out away from the
wall, and he was tossed down that same wall.
There's a Sufi story about the
happy-go-lucky Mullah Nasruddin: He walks out of a bar late at night
and drops his keys along the way. Crawling around in search of the
key, he attracts the attention of a passing friend, who joins him in
the search. After crawling around quite a bit longer, the friend
finally asks, “Mullah, where did you last remember holding your
keys?”, to which the Mullah replies, “Over in that dark alley.”
Confused, his friend asks, “Then why are we looking under this
lamp post?” Mullah replies, “Because this is where the light
is.”
Same goes in ice climbing. When
assessing technique flaws, don't look for the obvious answers,
because the body is a system and what happens in one remote locale
will affect things far elsewhere. Ice climbing is not atomistic, it's
holistic. If you want to understand what's going on, you have to
look big picture. Approach things with a big-picture framework in
order to understand and work on the parts.
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| Ramping things up on Glass Menagerie (WI5), Lake Willoughby. Photo credit: Mammut Athlete Art Mooney |
Concept: Pay Attention to the Parts.
Above I counseled about looking at the
big picture. Now I'll recommend just the opposite. All nifty
aphorisms have their limit, and perhaps each inevitably contains its
opposite. So while I've been reminded to look at the big picture,
I've also been reminded of the need to pay attention to the parts.
Not too far into things two seasons back, I was hammering my way up a
particularly stiff, steep, stout section of Poke-o-Moonshine's
“Waterfall Route”. My calves stung like I'd stepped on a wasp
nest. But my heels were down, my hips were in...why then the
trouble? Without any apparent suspects, I did a body scan: my grip
was good, arms straight, shoulders out, heels and hips as noted...but
inside my Mammut Nordwand's my toes were clenched tighter than the
teeth of a nun whose just been propositioned. That could make some
sense with rock shoes on, helping to fine-tune the positioning of the
sticky rubber, but it makes none in the stiff sole of a performance
climbing boot. All that muscular purpose and energy was going
nowhere, so, I relaxed. Nothing changed in my foot security. But my
calves were instantly calmed. The fresh ice of Waterfall's upper
portion continued to ask for every ounce of swing energy and now I
could channel that energy where it was needed most. Paying attention
to my toes allowed my calves to stay cool and allowed me to move
upwards in good style.
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| Seeing the season clearly on the squeeze in Grand Illusion (WI4+), Smugglers Notch. Photo credit: Kel Rossiter |
Concept: Don't Overgrip Your Tools or
Your Life
Not overgripping your tools is obvious
to any ice climber. Similarly, for a successful season, it's
important not to overgrip life. Two seasons ago, I began with some
foot surgery. Unclear of how the healing process would unfold, I
didn't set any clear climbing goals. And, without any clear goals, I
tended instead toward filling my calendar with work days to the point
where any non-climb day was spent drying out and sorting gear,
followed by answering emails. Maybe your work doesn't necessitate
drying ropes and sorting gear, but perhaps the general gist of this
does.
While the guiding and instruction I did
provided it's own rewards, I also feel that to truly connect with the
work that I do, I have to keep myself in the role of the perpetual
learner. That's what keeps me connected with climbing. If it were
simply about hacking my way to the top of an ice cube I would have
lost interest long ago. Monkeys can do that. Monkeys can't reflect
on where they are and how they got there and where they want to go.
So, last season I scaled back. After I had the bases covered on my
guiding calendar, I began practicing how to say “no”.
It's not breaking news that too tight a
grip on your tools is a bad thing, but it's still so easy to forget
deep into the steep. But advice not to over-grip is typically
offered in terms of the actual hand and tool. I'm talking about
over-gripping life—which is also easy to forget in the deep and the
steep of life. Sometime in the melt-off of that March two years
ago, I'd looked back on my season and realized that while I'd been a
part of several of my client-climbers' groundbreaking successes
during the season, I'd had none myself. As climber, learner, guide,
and instructor it feels inauthentic to me if I'm not also staying on
the sharp end of challenge and exploration. So last season, I
loosened the grip and seized on something more vital.
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| On one of the wildest climbs I've been on, exploring an unnamed drip in a cave-couloir in the Adirondacks with my wife Alysse. Photo credit: Kel Rossiter |
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The skylight rappel from the cave-couloir, with climber-client Martin.
Photo credit: Kel Rossiter |
Concept: Experience Amounts to Nothing
Without Reflection
Climbers are a doing bunch living in a
doing culture. Emphasis is put on tick-lists and to-do lists—what
you've accomplished today and what's online for tomorrow. And
definitely, getting out there and doing it is vital. But that's only
half the equation if you really want to progress. As Paul Petzholdt
(founder of the National Outdoor Leadership School or NOLS) offered
bluntly, “There's a lot of climbers out there who'll tell you
they've got twenty years of experience—that's bullsh*t—what
they've got is two years of experience and eighteen years of
repeatin' the same mistakes.” Experience alone does not lead to
learning. I've learned a lot in stepping back to reflect on my
previous ice season and the lessons have been large. I look forward
to what I'll find in the season to come, frozen in the ice. Wishing you similar visions!
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