BURSTNina Caprez recently posted that she had bailed from a climb on Pic de Bure in the Dévoluy massif of the French Alps because she felt, “freaked out.” She explained why: she lacked experience in Alpine climbing, the rock quality was poor, and she had reached a point where the risks no longer made sense. She also mentioned being a mum and getting older, both of which had changed her appetite for unnecessary risk.
Bailing from a climb is one of the most important decisions a climber can make. Knowing you can choose to turn around is power in itself. More importantly, that choice can save you from a horrible experience and, at worst, injury or death.
I was once high on a cliff in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Dogface is less a cliff than a giant piece of cheese. The main face collapsed in the 1930s, leaving a 130-metre vertical slice of fresh sandstone above what amounts to a vertical beach. I was young and crazy, so naturally I decided to sand-surf the thing with my mate, Ben Pearce. A few pitches in, having survived loose rock, scratched holds with my fingers and staring at 50-year-old rusting bolts, we reached a point where a huge roof loomed ahead. That was enough. We decided to bail.
It was no easy decision. The cliff had a draw on me. It looked wild and it was wild. We had planned for it, invested time in organising the climb and got up at a stupid hour to make the descent to the base. A dream had been set in motion then Ben and I walked away from it. There was a good chance that cliff could kill us. Death or dreaming? We chose dreaming and got the hell out of there.
Bailing is an option available to every climber. We often choose it based on experience and wisdom, but just as often it comes from a feeling we cannot immediately explain. That knot in your stomach is worth listening to. There is a good chance your brain is telling you something before you have worked out how to put it into words.
Renowned American high-altitude mountaineer Ed Viesturs, who climbed all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre peaks without supplemental oxygen, built his career around a simple philosophy: “Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
That is fine-wine wisdom. It has been aged by experience, tested in the highest and most dangerous places on earth, and reduced to a sentence clear enough for even the most ambitious climber to understand. The summit is a goal but getting home is the obligation.
Alex Honnold’s bail on his first El Cap soloing attempt on Freeblast is well documented. He has spoken about that gut feeling and the sense that he was better off getting off the wall. Ironically, moments like this can get pushed into the saved-but-not-shared part of a climber’s story when the eventual narrative is one of success. Alex eventually returned and climbed Freeblast, then went on to make the first free solo of El Capitan.
Honnold’s retreat didn’t make the headlines his success did. Success sells. Retreat does not. No one wants to see a soldier retreat, yet retreat is often exactly what keeps the soldier alive.
Another example has always stayed with me. In 2008, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk attempted the legendary Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru in India. They survived a massive storm and sub-zero temperatures while pinned to a portaledge. By the time they were close to the summit, they were running dangerously low on food and were seriously weakened.
They were only about 300 feet from the summit, the kind of distance that can play tricks with your head. You have come that far. You can see the prize. Everything in you wants to keep going because turning around now feels almost impossible. They turned around. They bailed 100 metres below the summit because they understood that the summit was not worth gambling their lives for. They went home, thought about it and came back later to succeed. That’s not failure, that’s climbing 101.
Alex Honnold, a climber so often described as fearless, was able to down-climb and walk away. That is testament to something more interesting than fearlessness. Even the greats have limits. Nina recognised that other joys in life needed her presence in the future. Recognising your limits and acting on them is part of what makes a great climber. The same goes for Anker, Chin and Ozturk. They had put years of effort into getting to Meru. They had endured a storm, cold, hunger and exhaustion. They were within a bee’s wing of the summit and still decided the best climbing decision was to go down. Ben and I, we laugh about it today. Laughter is so much better being six foot under.
Bailing can give you something precious: time. Time to reflect, time to understand what happened, and time to work out whether you actually want to go back and finish what you started. Sure, there will be times when you think of yourself as a pussy or a flake, but perfection is boring anyway. It is in the hard decisions that wisdom gains its power. Failure can become one of the biggest influences for good in your life. You learn from that stuff.
What I like about Nina’s, Alex’s and the Meru decisions is that these are notable climbers. They influence the rest of us, whether they like it or not. When climbers of that level share their bails, it is not a sign of weakness. No way. It is a glimpse of wisdom being recognised in real time.
There are caveats, of course. If a climber bails on a significant route, some will see it as failure or fear. They might think the climber was not up to it or has lost their edge. Really? Nah, I don’t think so.
We live in a world of instant information where bold ascents are packaged beautifully, accompanied by sweet music and clean moves. We watch climbers moving confidently through terrain and begin to believe that the person being filmed is somehow invincible. They aren’t. These climbing giants are human, just like us.
We are all going to die. Every climber we admire is going to die. It’s a given. The climber who decides that today is not going to be that day has made a decision worth understanding, and dude, that’s a choice.
I look back at the bails of my life and see them as a bookshelf of my climbing career. I tuck into those memories and reread them often. With time, my reasons for bailing have evolved. In the beginning, it was usually a lack of skill. I did not have the strength, experience or knowledge to continue safely. Later, the reasons became more complicated: protecting my family, protecting my livelihood and understanding that there are consequences beyond the immediate experience of climbing a route. The best part is that I am still here to appreciate those choices. I am thankful I made them. And, just as importantly, bails make for great bar stories.
Perhaps that is the real lesson in bailing. It is not about being scared or weak. It is not even necessarily about knowing exactly why you are turning around. Sometimes wisdom arrives as a feeling other times your body knows before your brain catches up. The important thing is having the courage to listen up.
So what is your experience with retreat or bailing? What have you learned from it?
I bet it wasn’t that you were a lesser man or woman, or a poor climber. I reckon it was the opposite. You were a climber who understood that there would be another day and chose life over the moment. That means you have more in the tank to give.
The post Knowing When to Bail Off a Climb Can Save Your Life appeared first on Gripped Magazine.