Climbing and Climbers

BAIL- Verb. Meaning to quit, Something one climber says to another, pack it up, head to the comfort of your mother.

High in the sierra's in early winter...

“This is heinous” We were climbing vertical snow, not that nice solid stuff that inspires confidence but the snow thats more bitch than bull. Oh yeah and it was bloody nose cold, windy and we didn’t want to cowboy up anymore. Our previously bold talk had be silenced by tail-between-our-legs conditions. And so, sitting on the saddle between pillars of steep rock the conversation went like this.

“I'm cold, I mean I might be....”

“yeah”

“im not sure about this, it looks like a storm is coming, this could be a good point to....”

“yeah”

“you want too?”

“fuck”

“sooo?”

“bail, yeah, but i'm glad you said it first”

Bail, its the bell at the end of recess. The word can be heard before it's said, eye's scream it like a siren before the mouth has the courage to mutters those syllables and offer totally inadequate excuse for the action about to be executed.

I've done it, more times than I want to admit. There are lots of reasons to pack it in; cold, heat, difficulty, exhaustion, general cowardice. After some of my particular “bails” I look back and say, that was a great decision or man i'm such a sissy.

Failure is not spoken of as much as its practiced. Think about it, over beers people like to talk about being badass not weak sauce. And so it gets a bad rap. As any good climber knows, we push ourselves, hard. More often than not we over estimate our abilities and end up retreating. This is how progress is made. Being aggressive is the name of our game, hanging it out there and seeing what we can do. Standing in contrast to sports where failure does not include death the ability to make assessments about ones capacity to get out of this or that particular mess keeps you alive. We call it commitment and you don't have to be on a mountain to feel it, run out a sport climb that you cant down climb or get high on a tall boulder and wait for it... yeah there it is.... and the sphincter tightens .