Climbing: An explanation and recounting of a kind-of bad day

My capris are covered with chalk and my hands are raw so it should have been a great day. The climbing day started out well. We hiked up a beautiful river canyon to the cliff area , the "crag" as it is called climbing lingo. The crag that we hiked to is named Trebenna after some ancient greek and roman ruins of the same name.

Day 16 at the Trebenna Crag

Lately, climbing has been a little more difficult for me. After my ski accident last April Fools day, I have been much more skittish about any sort of danger. In fact, Wilson had a few good laughs at my street crossing technique in Amman, Jordan. To cross the street in Amman, we usually had to cross 3 ambiguous lanes of traffic with no stop lights to assist. Thus in order to accomplish this feat, we' d find a break in traffic and Wilson would speedily but coolly saunter across. I, on the other hand, would either sprint across or start to cross and then run back -- only to wait for the next break in traffic. Needless to stay, skittishness has not helped my climbing. And the skittishness made a full appearance today.

Today was our fourth day of climbing during our foreign travels. Three days here in the Geyabayiri climbing area of Turkey and one day in an Israeli portion of the West Bank. That day in Israel, Wilson "led" all the routes and I followed on "top rope" or "TR". TRing is considerably less stressful than leading because the leader has already put the rope at the top of the cliff and in a fall, you can swing but you generally will not fall very far or hurt yourself. Leading, on the other hand, is scarier. .. but the way that we lead ...it is not too scary, usually.

The way that we climb is called sport climbing. With sport climbing, someone has already cemented a "bolt" into the wall.

Bolt in the wall

The bolts are frequently placed at 5-10 feet increments until you reach the top of the climb where "anchors" are screwed/cemented into the cliff. The bolts stay in the rock year round but as a climber, your bring gear called "quick draws" to clip into the bolts.

To lead, a leader ties into a rope and clips the quick draw into the bolt and then clips the rope through the quick draw.

Tanya tying in -- the first bolt has been clipped but she will lead the rest of the route

This way if the leader falls, then the belayer can catch him because the rope is through the quick draws. In the picture above Nick is Tanya's belayer and Fletcher their dog is her cheerleader.

When you lead, you can fall much further because you are often above the bolt that you have clipped in to and thus you can swing down pretty far or even into the rock. Amazingly, that swing down (or even into the rock) is not likely to hurt you. The reason why is that you often fall into the air or, if hitting the rock, can break the impact with your feet. Thus, most of the time even when leading, if you are practicing safely, there is either an extremely small or no chance of major injury.


Today, I attempted to lead a climb that was 75 feet tall. After I had climbed 40 feet, I had to climb inside a "tufa". A tufa is when a stalagtite forms down and outside of the cliff. This tufa created a vertical 5 meter tunnel up the cliff. You can see the tufa that I was climbing in to the right of the woman climbing.

While leading through a tufa, I not only had to deal with the normal psychological fear of falling into the air, or worse the cliff wall, I also risked hitting the side of the tufa. Despite these worries, I shouldn't have been nervous because there were good holds and the climb, rated 10a, is not too hard of a climb. But I found myself paralyzed and unable to make the good moves with the good holds. This happens sometimes in climbing because despite the low likelihood of injury, climbing intuitively feels irrational.

Climbing, when practiced safely, is a rational safe sport. You rationally know that when you fall five or ten or even fifteen feet while leading, the majority of the time, you will not hurt yourself. The odds of not hurting myself on my tufa climb today were in my favor (especially because I knew the holds were good) but my basic instincts overrode my rational calculation of risk. Because I became paralyzed by mind, I had to ask Wilson to lower me to the ground and lead the climb again. He was very understanding. We talked about how climbing at its nadir is complete frustration/fear or both and climbing at its peak is a wonderful combination of meditation, exertion, and achievement.

Tomorrow is a rest day where we will swim in the Mediterranean Sea and see Antalya (another ancient town). Tomorrow, I will not worry about the battle between the instinctual and the rational. But I hope that on Monday, when we climb again, the rational will win. Meditation on the 10a instead of paralysis!