I’m a Climber Who Can’t Climb

That damn shoe. Last July, I was climbing a beautiful multipitch route, when my climbing partner dropped their hiking shoe. It rocketed down the mountain, never to be seen again. I leant my partner my camp slipper for the three mile hike out and helped carry their camping and climbing gear. I was afraid they’d injure themselves with asymmetrical footwear.

Instead I got injured. The extra weight was too much for me. As we hiked out I felt increasing pain on my foot that swelled until I stumbled to their car around midnight. Later after months of pain, crutches, and doctor visits it was determined that I had broken my MTP sesamoid, a tiny bone below the ball of my big toe. Doctors told me it would not heal. That it would never stop hurting. That I should get it surgically removed. But that the recovery would take over a year. And the surgery did not guarantee I would be able to walk without pain. It didn’t guarantee that I would be able to climb again.

Climbing was my community. It’s how I met friends, how I met my husband. It was my favorite way to spend time. Climbing was my release. I loved how it took over my brain and body. Climbing felt like dancing with the mountain, dancing with the sky. The possibility of falling was part of the appeal: danger forced attentiveness. Focusing on footwork gave me a break from constant worrying about my high school students, the constant worrying that I wasn’t doing enough as a teacher. Climbing was also my way to contribute. I loved being a volunteer climb leader for The Mountaineers. I loved leading trips and teaching students how to climb.

It's been over ten months. I feel broken and bitter. I feel left behind when my husband or friends go out climbing without me. I feel guilty that I backed out of leading a Mountaineers SIG when it became too sad for me to continue teaching climbing when I couldn’t climb myself. I keep seeing the shoe falling, wishing I could go back in time, wishing that I could change gravity.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t the shoe’s fault. My injury was a long time coming. I was in a cycle of overuse. Last year, when classes were online and my students were reduced to blank boxes on a screen I went on a hike, climb, or bike every day to try and lesson the constant buzzing of anxiety in my head.

The pressure to move wasn’t all internal. I love the Mountaineers but there is a bit of an pervasive unhealthy attitude, an obsession with “conditioning,” a constant messaging that slower people are burdens. That one must go more miles, get higher, carry more weight. As a female climb leader, I especially felt that I had to prove myself. I was terrified of being the slowest person on a climb. I trained, trained and overtrained.

So maybe it was an accident or maybe it was overuse that made me unable to climb anymore. But does this matter? It is such a small thing: a broken bone, a hobby put aside.

On March 6th my SIG coleader died while attempting a difficult route up Mt. Hood. She was one of the strongest mountaineers I’ve ever known. I initially met her when she was a student on a climbing course that I helped instruct. I instantly liked her: she was warm, she was funny, her joy when climbing was contagious. I was looking forward to coleading a SIG with her. Part of my sadness from stepping away from the SIG was the fact that I wouldn’t get to spend more time with her. Now I never will. No one will.

After her unbelievable death, it seemed to me that the best way to honor her would be to continue trying to teach others to thrive in the mountains she loved so much. I helped at a couple of practices. But I wasn’t able to live up to her legacy. It’s one thing to be sad teaching climbing when I know that my injury prevents my own climbing. It’s quite another to be terrified that I’m teaching students to do something that might kill them in the end. When I tried to teach crevasse rescue techniques, I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t stop imagining her falling.

There is a part of me that wants to stop all this senseless climbing, this senseless risk. I want to be like the Catcher in the Rye and hold back climbers from the brink. When my husband packs his rope and harness I want to tackle him, make him stay home, keep him safe.

Instead, I tell him to be careful and hug him close before he leaves. Climbing gave me community, release, and a way to contribute. It made me feel wholly alive. I don’t want to deprive anyone of that joy.