News from Jules | 09.18.2023 | Braving the Wilderness: Part 2

During our very quiet two-hour drive on the very bumpy forest service road back to civilization, my heart kept bouncing between my chest and my stomach as my mind spun on overdrive. How could it be over? We’d barely started.

I kept replaying the scene in my head of us standing outside the soggy tent, our packs already drenched, as the brisk breeze blew the mixture of snowflakes and rain in our faces. My mind tried to calm my nervous system down from the waves of sadness, confusion, fatigue, and fear, by trying to figure out what had just happened.

I knew my feelings felt too big for the situation.

Going through the mindful steps of Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Nonidentify (RAIN), I realized what I was really afraid of: Not that our adventure in the Wind River Range was over, but that we were over. That I had served my purpose as a climbing partner and now he’d want to move on.

Whoa. This wasn’t about us. This was my own deep, longheld insecurity flaring up. Which—if any—of all these thoughts should I share?, I wondered.

I marvel at all the ways
we learn to survive—
there is fight, flight and freeze,
and there is softening.
Softening, which allows
the next step to be light.
Softening, which leaves space
for goodness to arise.
Softening, which helps us
to meet the intersection
of the next moment
as if it’s an open road.

—“Survival” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Once I set the fear aside, there was space for curiosity. As we drove closer to town and had cell service, we slowly stumbled through a debriefing conversation, sorting out assumptions from facts and agreeing on an immediate plan: Find a laundromat to dry everything, eat real food, sleep in a real bed at the trailer, and reassess in the morning.

Waking up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with the sunrise the next day, I laid in bed researching the weather forecast and the hike approaches while he made coffee. We gauged our gear needs and pack load and assessed our energy levels before I called my Dad, my go-to risk assessment consultant, to talk through options.

I realized with a deep sigh: They were right. It was over.

But, once I let go of the Wind River Range, also known as the Winds, I finally had the courage to ask: What else could we do with the next week together?

We quickly came up with a new plan to drive the two hours over to Sinks Canyon near Lander, Wyo., where there’s tons of sport climbing and the weather looked sunny and stable. The day just kept getting better from there.

We did all the trailer upkeep errands on the way, booked a beautiful riverside campground available for the entire week, visited the local outdoor store for beta and a guidebook, found a local climbing gym for stretching and showers, and then took ourselves on a date to a fancy restaurant on Main Street.

Lander ended up being the perfect small town to just relax and enjoy ourselves—not only sport climbing outdoors and bouldering at the rock gym, but hiking, kayaking, soaking, dining, and even seeing a live concert at the local pub.

See photos from our adventures in Sinks Canyon and Lander on Instagram.

The next day we joyfully set out from our campsite down the path, over the bridge, and up to the crag with light packs and relieved backs. We weren’t 10 miles deep in the Wind River Range but we did have the entire climbing area to ourselves besides the chipmunks and birds chatting nearby.

After a couple of easier warm-up routes, we poked through the bushes and around boulders to find a short, 35-foot route up an arête—a vertical corner of rock pointing out, away from the main cliff mass. It seemed too easy for my partner until I realized why he wanted to find it.

“Ready to lead your first climb?,” he asked.

This is what my Bend Climbing Club friends had been helping me to learn all summer in preparation for this trip. We had practiced proper protection placement, rope management, and communication over and over at the gym.

Challenge accepted.

I quickly but carefully ascended, then savored the view from the top with a selfie before lowering to the ground to get a high-five for “crushing it.” It felt like we were ready to try something harder and longer. So, I still don’t understand what happened next.

I completely fell apart.

I immediately struggled on the first few moves of the sheer start to the route. Losing my grip on a tiny handhold, I started to slip. I squealed out realizing I was still falling as my knee crashed into the wall and my tippy toes touched the ground. I started over and made it a bit further before I needed a break, but once again lost several feet of progress as the rope stretched further even after slack was taken in.

The holds were small and spread out. I was stretched too thin. It was hard and I wasn’t having fun. After a very long pause while I considered giving up, I kept climbing.

Tears started running down my cheeks as I realized how far I’d come and that when I made it to the top, I’d also have to clean the anchor—an important and risky transition of protective equipment that I had messed up on our first route that day.

I was still crying as I attached my personal protection—a piece of webbing knotted to a climber’s harness and then secured to a bolt with a locking carabiner—to the wall and reached for my extra locking carabiner. I needed to retie and secure the rope to my harness before detaching it from the anchor to lower down.

But, it wasn’t there. I looked down and realized my extra locking carabiner was attached to him and to a sling of webbing looped around the tree at the bottom to help us belay more safely on the uneven ground.

I asked for help and he calmly guided me through the steps to repurpose the two nonlocking carabiners from one of the quickdraws in opposite and opposing directions, secure them through the figure-eight knot to my harness, remove the anchor, test my weight on the rope looped through the bolt rings, then finally remove my personal protection before lowering all the way down.

As soon as my feet safely hit the soil, he removed his belay device and walked over to wrap me in his arms, shaking and still crying. Seemingly hurt led to fatigue led to frustration led to panic. And then adrenaline.

He reassured me how strongly and competently I had actually climbed, but inside I felt completely weak. I couldn’t hold it together any longer.

Just like when I got hangry on our snowy last morning in the Winds when we tried to wait out the rain before getting the bear bag of food in order to cook breakfast.

Just like when I stubbornly clung to optimism about heading back into the Winds because deep down I was scared of losing everything.

And just like what happened a few days later on a hike when I finally fully shared about my nervousness related to our trip and coming so far to spend time together.

Raw and real. Simply being.

And yet, there he was.

Just like the hug after the hard climb, there he was an hour after our talk on the hike, sitting behind me on the rock while I stripped down to jump in the pool beneath the waterfall that flowed from the rocks and river we had just scrambled up.

I quickly realized the frigid water was way too cold for swimming. After icing my sore legs for a few minutes, I laid back on the warm rock to dry off. I felt the tingle of warmth across my skin basking in the sun's rays and the dull cold of my feet and ankles still underwater, bracing me on the rock.

Mostly joy and a little pain. At the same time.

Because relationships—no matter how long or brief—are not a walk in the park. Relationships are the wilderness.

So, you’ve got to bare it all.

According to Brené Brown in her book, Braving the Wilderness, “the mark of a wild heart is living out the paradox of love in our lives. It’s the ability to be tough and tender, excited and scared, brave and afraid—all in the same moment. It’s showing up in our vulnerability and our courage, being both fierce and kind.”

Exactly what I experienced and how I grew—as a person and as a climber—during our two weeks reconnecting in Grand Teton National Park, then the Wind River Range, and then our “vacation” in Lander before we headed our separate ways: him to Colorado and me to New Mexico.

Softening, which helps us
to meet the intersection
of the next moment
as if it’s an open road.

May you soften this week.

Love,

Jules