Balancing Work, Family, And Climbing Is A BIG Challenge

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I’m never going to be a truly great climber.

Don’t get me wrong, I am knowledgeable, I am safe, I am self-sufficient, I am responsible. I can probably go to many wild, high places and be okay. Further, I can lead a group of others in those environments, as well.

But when it comes to the sheer difficulty of physical moves on rock or mixed or whatever, I’m getting too old - but more importantly I just can’t put in enough training time - to be truly great. I only have so many hours in the day, and my work, my family, and just making these videos takes up a lot of it.

It took me a little while to be okay with that, but so I’ve become.

I found that expecting professional level fitness from my limited budget of time did nothing except create a lot of negative self-talk. And then I had the realization that I describe in the video: it’s all arbitrary, anyways.

If we look at a mountain or a cliff face or whatever, most often no one is taking the absolute hardest way up. That path might be too physically hard or it may have too many hazards, or whatever. But also, we aren’t likely to be taking the easiest way up, once we get just a little time climbing under our belts.

So, we are constantly climbing to a very relativistic standard, a standard set by our current ability levels and risk tolerances. And so is every climber. It we look at the cave Adam Ondra is climbing out of in the little clip added into my video, he is climbing what is believed to be the hardest climb in the world. But even then, there are paths he could have chosen to attempt that were even harder, but so hard that he didn’t bother attempting them. So, there is no “objective” standard of difficulty that he is overcoming. He isn’t climbing the “hardest.” He’s climbing the hardest thing a human with his (or any other) level of fitness has ever attempted.

Why, then, should I feel bad about not climbing that hard? Why should I feel bad about being at my current point on the relativistic scale of difficulty when we all are at some point on a relativistic scale. There is no “winning” climbing

As such, competitions not withstanding, there is no winning at climbing. Even in a competition, it is down to the route that was set and the relative sleep, strength, nutrition, jet lag, whatever, that conspired to set the ability levels of the competitors at that moment in time. We didn’t win, if we win a competition; we simply did the best in a specific situation that will never come to pass again. As such, climbing can only be practiced, not won.

Once I had that realization, I was able to let go. When I let go, I enjoyed my climbing even more, and was able to share it without shame.