Accidents

I was shocked when Brad Gobright died. I didn't know him but he was a climbing celebrity that I followed, a badass that I looked up to a little. It's a strange feeling when a celebrity dies unexpectedly like that, not quite grief, not quite sadness, more like a reminder that we're all mortal.

I had similar thoughts and feelings when David Lama, Jess Roskelley, and Hansjörg Auer died in Canada this spring, since I'd started following David Lama after his attempts of Lunag Ri with Conrad Anker and his eventual solo ascent.

I read retrospectively about Ueli Steck, Marc-André Leclerc, and Dean Potter. Jason Wells and Tim Klein. Quinn Brett's paralyzed. There are more that had accidents before them.

Sometimes it feels like a waste, for them to have accidents in the mountains when they had so much more life to live. But I wonder what those that died would think, if they would think they made some existential mistake, or if they accepted the risks of alpinism, rock climbing, and wingsuit flying. It's obvious that a big part of climbing is pushing your comfort level, and at the pro level that means pushing the sport, pushing what's humanly possible. There's a lot to be said for toeing the line of danger, and for doing what the rest of us can't do in the mountains.

I'm remembering an Ernest Hemingway quote: "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." I used to feel proud to participate - at my own level - in a sport like that, but now it mostly just makes me feel numb.

I don't really know why I'm writing this, it just feels like something that I needed to write. Maybe I want to write it so that I remember how fragile our squishy bodies are. Maybe I want to write it so that I remember what makes climbing so fun. Maybe I want to write it so that I remember that lots of badass people are still here: Dave MacLeod, Angela Vanwiemeersch, Alex Honnold, Tommy Caldwell, Conrad Anker, Emily Harrington, and more.