A Cranky Old Man’s Return to Climbing

Sidelined by an ignoble injury, Dave Pagel contemplates his return to a sport that has moved on without him—or is it the other way around?

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Climber, Interrupted

“Oh, no! Climbing.” Not even a question mark.

It was the natural reaction, repeated time and again, by all who knew my passion. After all, here I was, a mountaineer of indeterminate skills and judgment, void of other athletic interests or talent, now hobbled upon crutches and clamped below the knee in a Goliath-sized walking cast.  What could it be other than evidence of some epic mountain disaster? I’d like to think my situation conjured images of a magnificent fall, a stoic collision with unforgiving stone, capped off by a heroic crawl over talus and ice back to civilization. Never mind that those who knew me doubtlessly envisioned a stumble in the dark while peeing from an unplanned bivouac. Either way, a tale of mountain adventure was what people expected to hear, and what I longed to tell. The truth, however, was the antithesis of glorious injury, and demanded a shameful confession:

“Gardening.” 

Blank looks, then a cautious brightening: “You mean cleaning out a crack?”

“No. Digging a hole.” 

More perplexed expressions. A final stab at context: “Ah, a snow cave! Or a deadman anchor?”

“Um, no. Digging. In actual dirt. To plant … plants.” 

In fact, the deadman reference wasn’t far off the mark because although I didn’t know it at the time, in terms of climbing, I’d also dug my own grave.

Instead of an ice axe, a shovel was literally the implement of my destruction. Hammering my heel repeatedly behind the blade had transmitted blunt, concussive impacts throughout the foot’s musculature, eventually rupturing a sinew deep within the ankle. At first I felt only a burning discomfort, like a mild sprain, and so I kept at it, stomping and chipping at the rocky clay with blind determination, ultimately planting myself deep in a depression of my own making.

For weeks, months and then years afterwards, the vertical tear hiding within the tendon eluded diagnosis; meanwhile, every step I took ground the fibrous gristle, exacerbating the damage. I deteriorated from limp, to crutch, and even wheelchair. Eventually, I abandoned any form of ambulatory exertion and took to the couch, no longer even an armchair mountaineer.

By the time the surgeon finally deduced and repaired the injury, years of inactivity and unburned calories had accumulated over me like a lead blanket. Any thoughts of climbing had long ago been routed to dead-end sidings of the brain, abandoned in isolated pockets of hazy memory and impracticable dreams. In a bloated, sedentary gloom, I could imagine no path leading back to the mountains. Objects at rest tend to remain at rest.

Finally, badgered by family and friends, shamed by my own reflection, and with the fear of god put in me when my slimmer and more active father suddenly clutched his chest and dropped dead in my arms, I turned off the TV, pried myself out from between the sofa cushions, and ate an apple. Training had begun.

I walked roads, then trails, ever faster, finally running. Slowly the pounds began to melt away, muscles firmed, and the ankle held. I saw light at the end of the tunnel, even began daydreaming about possible trips and routes to mark my return to mountaineering. For the first time in years I bought a climbing magazine. And that’s when the needle skated off the record:

5.15b.

Really. Really?!

Stranger in a Strange Land

I never expected the merry-go-round to stand still, but until I got bucked off, I guess I never appreciated just how fast it was spinning. Sure, I’ve got a dusty box in my basement full of T-tons and Peck nuts and other relics of mountaineering archeology that no climber born after the Reagan administration has ever heard of. But the evolution from those bits of antiquated chockery to the state-of-the-art gear I had been snagging into cracks right before I kicked that garden spade had seemed measured and logical, like the little finches of the Galapagos Islands gradually developing slightly different beaks or minor variations in plumage in response to their changing world. Now, judging from the pages of the magazine, during the time I’d been away from climbing, everybody had turned into flamingos.

In particular, the current high-water standard of mid-range 5.15 seemed absolutely trippy. Not that the upper fringes of climbing were ever my bailiwick—even in my prime, I was elated whenever I managed to untangle a 5.11 ball of twine. Long ago, however, when mountaineers were still clucking over the fact that the Yosemite Decimal System for rating fifth-class climbing (5.7, 5.8, 5.9, etc.) had necessarily popped its top to accommodate the mathematically nonsensical 5.10 and beyond, I saw a magazine advertisement that poked graphic fun at the grades. In it, some guy had posed for a photo by backing his ass and legs beyond the lip of a jutting horizontal overhang, the underside blank and smooth as troweled concrete, his rope dangling freely through empty space. The caption read, Leading a 5.15 pitch! At the time, we all chuckled because the number, like the photo, was so comically preposterous. In those bygone days, when the best in the world were poking at the lower ranges of 5.13, the likelihood of 5.15 ever becoming a reality seemed on par with printing the Bible on a pinhead.

Of course, I should have seen it coming: Even in my heyday, 5.13 was thoroughly mastered, even passé, as the elite hammered away at 5.14. Nevertheless, in my mind, because of that one memorable spoof from the Paleozoic, the notion of 5.15 climbing had remained the height of absurdity. Then, in the midst of my convalescence, scientists announced they’d managed to etch the entire Old Testament on the head of a pin.

So here I am, Gripped van Winkle, wide awake again at last, blinking in the strange dawn of an unfamiliar and unsettling reality. Or perhaps, because of my absence, I’m just seeing things through fresh eyes. Whatever the case, climbing seems to have turned upside-down. It’s a world gone mad: Little kids are climbing Everest, Greg Mortenson is the Devil, and shares of Black Diamond are publicly traded on NASDAQ.

The question isn’t when I will ever climb again. It’s whether I even want to.

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