UKC

A current thread has me thinking.

I have found that:

A. It's easier to climb up than down (though not always safer). Even traversing it's actually hard not to ascend on steep ground.

B. At *any* point in my mountaineering career my experience and capability are good enough to get me into situations that they are *not quite* good enough to get me out of. I suspect this is a consequence of spending more days doing OK than days rescuing clusterf*cks, but there may be other explanations.

Given A and B, it's just as well that:

C. I, and partners, have more in reserve than we imagine; and necessity is the mother of invention. Each epic becomes a new outer comfort envelope. In short, good judgement comes from bad experience; bad experience from bad judgement.

But, having said that, it's amazing there aren't more accidents/I'm still alive/anyone straps crampons on at all(*).

Anyway, yeah, muppets and that....




*(provided they haven't left them in the car)

In reply to JJL:

Crampons not good for bouldering mats.

In reply to JJL:





I like this observation. Reminds me of a few leads! The beauty of 'I'll just head up here, shouldn't be too bad'. A few minutes later. 'Shit, this is desperate!'

In reply to JJL:

I am of the opinion that;

Some days your mind isn't able to do what your body can handle.

And some days your body isn't capable of what your mind can handle.

However, reaching a new high of pain/fear/ whatever does become your new threshold. Most people don't know what it is to truly hurt though.

In reply to zimpara:
>


Dave MacLeod has written about this in the past. Repeatedly putting yourself in hard and scary situations expands your zone of comfort, while always staying in the comfort zone makes it get smaller and smaller.



'Most people don't know what it is to truly hurt though.'


Until they have a bad fall?

In reply to zimpara:


I do. And it's not as bad as you think it'll be. What *is* bad is chronic pain. I'd take 10/10 acute pain over 2/10 chronic pain any time.

In reply to adamarchie:


Agree with this, especially the first bit.

Part of me would like that I was worse at downclimbing, I've got into situations way out from gear where the consequences vs. "probability of making it" scales slip out of favour and then simply reversed the entire pitch taking the gear out, others may fluster, go into the psycological red and top out - which in a sense might be no bad thing in the long term for mental growth.