Talk about the biggest difficulty you encounter when climbing

Talk about the biggest difficulty you encounter when climbing

Mountaineering is a passion, let's share the hardest mountaineering moments you've ever experienced.

Adam Levine wrote: Talk about the biggest difficulty you encounter when climbing

Mountaineering is a passion, let's share the hardest mountaineering moments you've ever experienced.

High quality poops are hard to come by up there, those earth shattering orgasmic ones.

My large booty makes overhung routes difficult.

Also being a type 1 diabetic creates challenges that most climbers don’t have to contend with.

Mostly my booty though. 

I walked to the top of White Mountain outside Bishop. 3rd tallest in the states. I was beat. My buddy smoked cigs at the top. Don't do much mountaineering. 

Kelley Gilleran wrote: I walked to the top of White Mountain outside Bishop. 3rd tallest in the states.

3rd tallest in the State of California. Big difference.

Adam Levine wrote: Talk about the biggest difficulty you encounter when climbing

Mountaineering is a passion, let's share the hardest mountaineering moments you've ever experienced.

Seems like you would have offered a difficulty, since you started the topic.

Decided to climb on an extremely cold and windy day in NH.
I was seconding and dropped a tool freeing the frozen rope half way up the second pitch. I was just out of sight from my partner and couldn't hear him with the wind.  
Grabbing the rope with one hand and using brute strength was able to pull myself up over the bulge to where I could see him and tell him to lower me to get the lost tool. (luckily it landed from in my last belay stand).

I learned a lot -
1. We use walkie talkies now clipped to our shoulder straps
2. I started using umbillicals on multipitch
3. I should have used prusiks to aid myself to a safe spot where I could see my partner.  

Being a diabetic type 1 and passing out while walking back in the dark after climbing half dome (forgot to take enough sugar). Luckily someone else came by with some chocolate and it save my life and helped me make the last few hours of hiking back to the car.

Our Mox Peak FA in the North Cascades in 2005.

A 45-minute water taxi ride with nothing but a pick-up time in 6 days, 2 soul-crushing days of bush-whacking in the rain, two terrifying days on the wall with a useless bolt kit and a long-ass day out.

The Devil's Club

getting older...

I’ve never had anything happen climbing nearly as terrifying as being cliffed out while back country skiing, lost my gear, had to crawl backwards down a 40 foot high slab covered in ice in my ski boots. Of course I slipped, went shooting down the slab at 35 mph and barely caught a 3 inch wide sapling before plummeting off the slab 30 feet to the ground. Climbing seems a lot less reckless by comparison.

Ah, curt86...wait until you really get older !  

Scary / difficult moment in Mts #1 - Simlu-climbing the side of a steep snow gully in the North Selkirks (Mt Sentinel) with Doug Kerr (FA: Doug's Roof, Gunks; Kerr Route, Noonmark Adks) and a 3rd climber when Doug, who is leading, pulls off a boulder about the size of half a refrigerator; it rolls over his leg and he starts sliding, while simultaneously the rock starts accelerating down the snow towards us. Doug stops, the rock passes by and we continue.  Later that evening in camp...one of the worst hematomias I've ever seen before or since.  He was totally out of commission for the next 2 weeks until our pre-arrainged heliocopter pick up. (Loooong before cell phones) Lesson: None really, sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

#2 - Huntington Ravine, Mt Washington NH, Snow conditions are 2 inches of glaze ice over snow, downclimbing "Escape Hatch" I make the mistake of not being more firm in having the less experienced climber(s) go down first. 3 of us on slope roped up, middle slips, pulls off top climber, I look up and see top climber falling, accelerating,...I plunge in my ice axe for ice-axe belay...it goes in 3 inches and stops..USELESS... top climber is still accelerating.     OK....one chance, I front point into her fall-line, dig in my crampons and ice axe and wait for her to hit...we either both stop, or we both go down.  Latter is the case.  Ice ice arrest is useless...pick won't go in.  Bouncing down the gully, I KNOW it's just a matter of time before we gain enough momentum to go out of the gully on a curve and into the rocks, then DEAD.  Believe me, knowing and believing you are going to be dead in the next 20-30 seconds changes your outlook on life (and risk)!
2 of us go on one side of a rock, the 3rd on the other...we stop.  Rescue, hospital, and multiple surgery(s) of one of us (the one not wearing helmet) Lesson(s): "Strongest" goes last down climbing, wear helmet.

#3 - Climbing on a slab, multi-pitch crag, believing we were in "old school 5.4 territory" the leader takes a 50-60 foot-er. He ends up about 40 ft above me.  Only two pieces in, but in the same crack. Fortunately, we're climbing on a 70m rope and I can lower him directly back to the belay. General responses slow, ankle definitely injured. I tie him off to the belay, pull the rope, and we start the self-rescue down the 4 pitches we've climbed up.  Here's the scary part: A week later I hike to the top of the crag and rap down the whole cliff to retrieve the 2 pieces of gear, when I get there the 0.75 (green) Camalot is completely pulled out of the crack, and the Red "TCU" Camalot (0.2, 0.3 ??) is completely extended and acting like a nut, but in a relatively parallel-sided crack.  He'd been lowered on THAT. The really scary part was at the belay he had told me the green was the one that had held.  If we'd been using a 60m rope I probably would have had to prussic the rope to tie him off and initiate the lower; it's doubtful it would have held.   Lesson: another reason for longer ropes !  

Mike wrote:

3rd tallest in the State of California. Big difference.

You're correct I was thinking lower 48. Where I guess White Mountain is the 14th tallest peak at 14,246 and Raineer is 1st at 14,411. A difference of 165'

Briggs Lazalde wrote:

Those numbers don't speak of actual elevation gain. One might appear to be a hill in comparison to Rainier. But when looking at the numbers yes these are tall places

Correct, White mountain is like 3500 feet of elevation gain whereas Rainier is like 9000 feet of elevation gain.

pump

Kelley Gilleran wrote:

You're correct I was thinking lower 48. Where I guess White Mountain is the 14th tallest peak at 14,246 and Raineer is 1st at 14,411. A difference of 165'

Mt. Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48, not Rainier.

Ken Noyce wrote:

Correct, White mountain is like 3500 feet of elevation gain whereas Rainier is like 9000 feet of elevation gain.

Depends on where you start walkin'.

Fun question to consider. Some of the most memorable moments of adversity I've experienced in my 23 years of climbing include:

Stuck rap lines on the Diamond in the midst of a freezing thunderstorm in which my dad and I were mildly electrocuted by lightning that struck the top of the wall (I was 16). Another time, on a multipitch ice route, I was caught in the debris path of an ice pillar that fell off an overhang at the top of the next pitch; I would have certainly been killed if I had been slightly higher or lower; instead the meat of the pillar missed me and I got away with bruised ribs. I've also climbed out of the Black Canyon with a broken ankle that resulted from a short, stupid fall on the crux pitch of Astro Dog (2015). And just last year I broke the other foot when I stumbled while carrying a heavy haulbag off a solo climb in Zion. Oh yeah, and I fell while soloing a multipitch ice climb once (2007?), but I self-arrested before I went over the edge of no return.

Non-climbing adversity:
• My mom almost died of hypothermia after we flipped a raft in Alaska on the second day of our expedition in 2001 (I was 18 then).
• Open-heart surgery in 2014 (age 32) takes the cake for sheer terror and misery. The recovery went well, though, and if it weren't for the scar down the middle of my chest and the baby Aspirin I have to take every day, I might almost forget it ever happened. Almost.

I like to think I've learned a lot from all these experiences; the amazing experiences are too many to count, which is why I continue doing what I do, though I've certainly dialed down the levels of mortal risk in the last 10 years. The saying about starting out with a full jar of "luck" and an empty jar of "experience" seems to sum it up well (over time, the Luck jar empties and the jar of Experience is filled).

Screaming barfies on the “guy parts” on a stormy day near windy corner on Denali. 

FrankPS wrote:

Mt. Whitney is the highest mountain in the lower 48, not Rainier.

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