The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers

phase of the risk.
    Figure 5.2: The Laser Beam

    Love and Commitment
    We touched earlier on an important key to decisiveness and commitment: motivation. When a challenge is large, you need to be in touch with heartfelt motivating forces in order to embrace the task at hand.
    In 1978 I was traveling around the West on a climbing trip with my brother Mark. I had an experience that shows how love-based motivation can energize you and help you commit. The commitment was of a slightly different type than we’ve discussed in previous examples. It was the more drawn out kind of commitment you need to head up onto a big wall, but the role played by motivation is the same as on a shorter climb.
    We had climbed many classic routes on the trip and our last goal was to climb the Diamond on Longs Peak in Colorado. We had climbed for a while in the Boulder area and, feeling confident, we decided to go up to Longs. We packed everything we needed with the intention of camping below the wall, climbing the face in one day, and walking out on our third day. We chose to do D7 , one of the shortest and easiest lines on the wall, in a mixed aid/free fashion. During our walk up, we felt confident and excited about climbing such a great alpine face—until we saw it. The face was huge, much bigger than anything we’d done before. The desolate alpine cirque, beautiful as it was, made the wall even more intimidating. After a few minutes of imagining ourselves on the wall, with plenty of negative self-talk going on, we escaped back to Boulder. We decided we would climb in Eldorado Canyon for the rest of our trip.

    The Diamond and the east face of Longs Peak, Colorado. Photo: Jeff Achey
    After the first day of climbing in Eldorado our thoughts drifted back to the Diamond. The beauty of the face and the fact that we had chickened out without giving it a true effort spurred us to go back. The next day we hiked up and camped below the wall. The face was just as intimidating, but we passed the afternoon by scoping out the approach, the route, and the walk-off. We decided to get up early the next day so we’d have plenty of time to climb, but woke up at 6 AM—not exactly an alpine start. Despite our late start we decided to go for it, although we both had in our minds that we might not fully commit. By 9 AM we were on Broadway, the large ledge below the Diamond proper.
    On Broadway I felt suddenly fueled by what I love about climbing: the setting, the exposure, a steep wall, and a degree of unknown. The alpine beauty of the place, which had been daunting, was now inspiring. We looked down on our camp and felt we had already embarked on a great adventure, even though we could still easily escape without facing the actual Diamond. Thus inspired, we began climbing and completed pitch after pitch without incident. We arrived at the top after nine hours on the wall, having made a great leap into the unknown and come out on the other side.
    By identifying with our fear of the unknown we had shut down the possibility of climbing the Diamond. We had allowed ourselves to be overwhelmed. Without coming to grips with the route, how could we know if we were capable of climbing such a wall? Yet how could we come to grips with the route if we didn’t believe we were capable? All big challenges have this element of ambiguity. By tapping into what we loved about climbing we were fueled to engage the route and let the experience show us if we could do it or not.
    The key factor was that desire to engage. We didn’t know whether or not we could climb the wall. We did know that we could engage it. When you engage the risk, you focus your attention on the process, not on the outcome. You focus on moving up, but you keep the channels open. You set an intention you can believe in: to engage the risk. Don’t set an intention of “making it up the climb,” since you don’t know for sure if you can. Instead, accept the two possible outcomes—making it up or not making it up—and focus on joining with the risk. Blending the new information coming from the risk with what you observed in the preparation phase and what you bring from your previous experience creates new learning. In the case of the Diamond, the new information was that being up in a wild, exposed place that previously intimidated us was energizing. The exposed position was an unexpected source of power, just the extra power we needed to climb the great wall that had been our goal.
    The Moment of