A few months back I found myself in a phase of my athletic career–and life–I wasn’t familiar with. I was injured.
Being a mountain-specific athlete, I constantly find myself practicing activities that, when not given the appropriate attention, can lead to injury (or worse). Alpine climbing, ski mountaineering, and general mountain travel aren’t the most conducive to staying healthy! This is compounded by the fact that these activities often take place in far off and obscure places, making rescue or self-rescue challenging, if not impossible. Regardless, our passion for these sports–ultimately, the choices we make–thrusts us into these situations.
One week during my last semester of college, I opted to disregard classes for a few days and instead attend a climbing clinic in Devils Lake, Wisconsin. It was led by Glen Griscom and professional rock climbers Ben Rueck and Dave Alfrey. During the workshop I spoke with Ben about how he deals with fear and while on challenging objectives. I had experienced my fair share of anxiety when running out the rope on hard single pitch climbs, but I knew then that I had aspirations to attempt bigger routes in the mountains and wanted to know how professionals in this field dealt with the inherent discomfort. He summed it up in one line.
“We choose to be there.”
At first this response had felt deficient. Of course we choose to be there. What I had wanted to hear were line items of specific actions. Regardless, his response has stayed with me ever since.
Years–and many personal expeditions into the mountains–later, I now understand what he meant. Yes, we choose to be where we are, but the sentiment behind this thought runs deeper. For me, having decided to take on a certain objective means that I need to prepare for and be able to deal with any consequences that might emerge from that decision. This responsibility is an inherent part of choosing to dedicate part of your life to the mountains.
Instead of downplaying the associated risks in sports like alpinism and ski mountaineering, I work hard to take precautions to keep myself and my partners safe. I’m meticulous about training, equipment, and the itinerary, often to a fault. Still, I’ve had partners become ill, injured, or mentally overwhelmed while tied off in the vertical. I have witnessed injuries firsthand and watched as good friends spent months rehabbing nagging issues, but had never experienced this myself. There’s a first time for everything.
In early February, my partner Carter Stritch and I skied the Skillet Glacier on Mt. Moran from a few hundred feet below the summit. An extensive amount of snow had greatly slowed our progress, and eventually its bottomless depth dissuaded us from continuing to the top. Located deep in the backcountry of Grand Teton National Park, this objective has implicit dangers.
This aspect of Moran is accessed by a long ski tour across Jackson Lake. Six miles to be exact. During our approach we experienced the phenomenon of ‘overflow water’. Basically, pockets of slush that rest between the frozen lake ice and the surface-layer of snow. If skis or ski skins (nylon sheaths that stick to the bottom of a ski via glue and are used to both cross flat terrain and to move uphill) are submerged in water they are quickly coated in ice and effectively become useless.
If anything, it had been only a minor inconvenience on the way in as we hadn’t suffered any serious setback because of it. Unfortunately for me, this wasn’t the case during our return trip.
Our trip progressed, and other than the aforementioned deep snow, the skiing aspect (mostly) went off without a hitch. At one point I had asked Carter to ski a beautiful line down a series of rolling hills dissected by shadow and light. He skied the line near-perfectly, but hit a snow-covered rock at the very end and split open the edge of one of his skis. As soon as he yelled to me that he was okay I checked to make sure I had made the image. Thankfully, I had.
I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot of room for me to improve within this sport. I picked up skiing only a few years ago, and ski mountaineering even more recently. Being an alpine climber provides me a comfortable base for spending time in these types of zones, yet I am still anxious about skiing extreme steep grades and into belays in no-fall zones. Honestly, I love it, and will continue to push my limits within the sport in the coming years. It helped that the terrain we moved over provided some of the best skiing I had ever done. It was one of those experiences that will keep me coming back.
We returned to camp, and had decided that we would pack and leave later that evening. It was cold, and we both figured that the overflow water that had accompanied us on the way in would be frozen. Less than a mile into our crossing, I found out the hard way that this wasn’t the case. My left ski and ski boot broke through a thin crust and my foot was completely submerged in water. Including the windchill, the temperature that evening was between -30 and -40-degrees Fahrenheit.
Carter had followed close behind, and although neither of his feet got wet, his equipment hadn’t escaped unscathed. Right after the incident, we both spent time deicing our skis before moving as quickly as we could back to the car. I had been cold at the time, but was completely unaware of what was happening with my foot. An hour after returning to the parking lot I had found myself lying on a bed at the Super 8 in Jackson tending a severe case of frostbite. I had removed the boot and sock from my left side only to realize that my foot was dangerously discolored and numb. I knew then that my current trip, and those in the near future, were over. After a few hours, the discoloration in the upper part of my foot had dissipated, but my toes were still black and now beginning to swell. The swelling made my entire foot look and feel like a 2x4 piece of lumber. At the time I was content to see part of my foot come back to life. This had softened my anxiety for the moment, but I still hadn’t realized the severity of my injury. It was a slightly apathetic thought, but the idea of being injured had always seemed to me more of a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if’ question. Moving forward I would have time to ponder that thought.
I saw a physician the same day I had submerged my foot, albeit later than I should have. I left the office tense. Alone and moving slowly, I hobbled back to my car on a petrified foot with toes I was uncertain would stay connected. What transpired was an accident, but I was upset nonetheless that I had let it happen.
In that moment I remember thinking to myself, “We choose where we are.” It was then that things seemed to come full circle.
Ben’s words had never rang more true as potential consequences had become tangible ones. Now I had to deal with them. The long drive home took a toll on me mentally. It seemed that every time I filled up with gas I had simultaneously texted a friend to cancel another trip. Worse, the heat in my car hadn’t been working due to a broken heater core. How ironic given my situation! I laughed out loud at the thought.
More than just having had to cancel trips, I was having one of my best climbing and skiing seasons yet. I had felt strong, and ski mountaineering in the Tetons was the first of many trips I had planned for the winter and spring. Those had all vanished in a mere few hours.
It’s human tendency to believe we understand what something might feel like, but only experience lends itself to this. I had no way of knowing what it would actually feel like to be injured, let alone what it would feel like to have an injury shrouded in ambiguity. I live a life where I often choose to embrace the unknown. At that point in time I wanted anything but. The only thing that I had wanted to do the week after my injury was to go for a run; my body was grasping for a state of normalcy. I guess it’s another tendency of ours to want what we can’t have.
After a month of being in the dark I had been officially absolved of any talk related to amputation. I breathed easy as I walked out of a local medical clinic in early March. This time had offered itself to reflection. I thought hard about my decision-making processes, about how to better mitigate these types of situations, and about what Ben had taught me about dealing with fear.
What I learned was this. The most important thing is that we come back. There is a lot that plays into this. To come back means to have left with the knowledge, skill set, and mentality that matched the landscape and objective. And of course, to have had a little bit of luck. The concept Ben had put forward originated from talking about how to deal with anxiety on routes in-real-time, but I’ve derived more value from it when used to reflect on previous adventures (or misadventures). I mentioned earlier our tendency to think we understand what a situation might feel like. Especially in mountain sports, we’re inundated with stories about injury, and oftentimes death. The truth is that it’s impossible to understand these situations until we tackle them face-on. Frostbite, hypothermia, anomaly weather events, failed rappel anchors. I’ve witnessed each of these. For those of us that practice these disciplines, we know the power of the fire that drives us. It’s just important we keep our priorities in check, even if that means lifting our foot off of the pedal.
Go far, climb high, come home.
– Alex Joseph
