Sutble Little Things About Climbing Rocks

When I mention that I'm breaking into lead climbing but I'm still uncomfortable with it, it's worth clarifying that I'm uncomfortable with it in a kind of fear-paralysis-let-me-verbalize-how-terrified-and-upset-I-am-every-second-that-I'm-on-the-rock kind of a way, not in any kind of stoic way.  I pause interminably at tough points, I still often give in to the temptation to hang on the rope as soon as I get to a point where I can clip in, I yell at myself, I curse, I cry, sometimes I even say things like "I'm gonna fall ahhhh!" even though I'm not at that moment falling, which is a really uncool thing to do to your belayer, who stands to have a pretty rough experience as well if you do actually fall while on lead.

I've gotten that down a bit, but it's still a pretty lame show of self-challenge. Improvement comes slowly: last time on real rock I merely paused at the one hard part for a minute, called myself an idiot about ten times, then pushed through without even crying.  I even lead an overhanging route on the outdoor wall at the gym without having to verbalize or pause at all, although I was shaking the whole time. 

But most significantly, I'm still uncomfortable with it enough that I never try to lead on routes anything like my actual climbing ability, I'm still uncomfortable with overhangs (even though they are actually safer for lead falls) and I'm still pretty much unwilling to lead a route that I haven't ever climbed before on toprope.  Which means I don't reach my limits, physically or mentally.  Which means I don't know if I particularly want to reach my limits or not.  I think I do--at least--I want to know what they are, and I like to think that shouting and crying Lead Me is not a real limit but just a layer of immaturity that has to fall away.  When you push your limits you find out who you really are, and I don't want that to be who I really am.

*

Last night at the gym I fell about 10 feet, right at the top of a bouldering problem. There's about a foot of springy padding on the gym floor, so although did feel a kind of slight head rattle, I think I was mostly shaky after that because I hadn't expected to fall and had been surprised by it.  Which highlights a problem with climbing: you're supposed to climb until you fall, meaning all falls should be more or less a surprise.  You aren't supposed to climb until you reach something you aren't sure will work so you give up and go back down--because then how will you ever get to practice the moves that challenge you?  You might be aware that in this move a fall is kinda likely, but if you don't even try because a fall is possible, or, if you try something crazy without at least some mentality of "this IS going to work," you are missing out on some crucial steps that lead to improvement.

I usually do give in to the temptation of "I don't see this working so I'm going to get off the wall and think some more," but this time I didn't.  There were a lot of people watching, one guy in particular giving really good advice, and I thought hey, I'll try that move, I bet it's possible..and hello air.  (That guy really should have been spotting my head, though.) Just like that, I made a conscious decision to do something that I knew was risky but also knew was likely possible--a decision I don't normally make but somehow found the power to do this time. That the surprise made me shaky highlights how I need to take risks more often, so that safe falls are not something jarring but something I'm used to.  

 

Split-second hesitation is so, so easy, while the alternative requires unwavering will. These are beginner lessons--and yet they keep coming back. It's not that anything suddenly gets easier, is that you grow enough to be more equal to the challenge.

(Not) Outward Bound (Yet)

This week my reading list has featured several classics in the theme of yearning for the outdoors:  first Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and now Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston, the guy featured in the recent movie 127 Hours.

Into the Wild is about a twenty-four year old idealist in the way of Tolstoy and Thoreau who went into Alaska in 1992 in order to live his greatest dream an in living off the land, "become lost in the wild."  This culminated a 2-year odyssey of hitchhiking and migrant working, undertaken abruptly after a stellar academic career at Emory without a word to his family about his whereabouts.  Four months after entering the wilderness, moose hunters found his remains.

This happens with some frequency in Alaska, as this country produces no shortage of those dissatisfied with modern life and yearning for simplicity, while actual knowledge in living off the land or the luck to survive the learning curve in order to succeed at doing so is pretty rare.   This story is noteworthy because the young man (my age!) did survive reasonably well for four months by hunting small game and gathering roots and berries, and ended up dead only because of two very small mistakes. He also left behind photographs, letters, and journals, giving us a glimpse into his trials and tribulations as well as the soul-searching that led him to seek the adventure that only by misfortune proved fateful.

I saw the documentary about Aron Ralston many years before the movie came out, featuring actual footage Ralston took with his video camera during the days he was stuck in the canyon, arm pinned immovably to the wall by a fallen boulder.  (In case you haven't seen the movie or don't know the story, he stayed in that cave until he ran out of water and knew there was no hope of rescue, then decided to and succeeded in sawing his arm off with his pocket knife, applying a tourniquet and hiking 5 miles back to the safety of civilization.)

The theme here is of course the call of the wild, the simple life, the rawness of adventure and hardship in the face of nature's uncaring rules and consequences.  You choose your level of risk but danger is an accepted part of the attraction, the experience isn't real if it isn't real.

I'm skipping through some of Ralston's many interludes into descriptions of his many other adventures climbing peaks about 14,000 feet in Colorado--but both books are very interesting to me, perhaps because I know just enough about the call of the wild and the harsh reality of nature without having had nor sought anything near the intensity of experience of either men.

And I don't want to go try to live off of the land in Alaska, and I sure as heck don't ever want to have to choose to cut my arm off in order to survive--but I do like to wonder if I were in such impossible situations, how would I respond?  I test myself with lead climbing and open water swimming and I barely even come close to real limits on my physical and mental ability because I still don't want to. I'm uncomfortable enough with those experiences even as comparatively mild as they are.

Maybe it's not the best theme for me to be pursuing when I'm on the cusp of turning a temporary job into a permanent affair, one full of awesome opportunity, playing to my skills, located in a place I want to stay located--but done mostly from a desk in front of a computer, far, from the quiet of the woods and the majesty of the mountains, and limits these soul-filling opportunities to weekends.

It was hard to pull myself away from my sojourn in Shenandoah to come here and start on this path.  Professional development and career opportunities and all the security that entails may in fact have nothing on the kind of less secure jobs and less secure lifestyle that allows one a richness of experience outdoors.  I wonder, when I look back on my life, will I be satisfied with the experiences I've had?

Open Water Swim

I competed in a 2-mile open water swim last weekend. Someone at my work said he was doing it about a month ago, and I decided I needed an extra challenge in my life. By the time I worked out getting a pool membership again, I had about 2 weeks to train. But hey, I used to swim distance events on the high school team, I've done plenty of 1-mile swims in the lake at scout camp without feeling particularly exerted, and I've been feeling like I'm currently in the best shape of my life.

Scout Camp Swimming Lake is not in the same league as Real Big Dammed Up River Lake--not at all. And open water swims are not like swimming in a nice little pool. I knew I needed to add a certain percentage to my pool time to account for flip turns and a lack of a straight line to stare at, but I couldn't really have prepared for the psychological aspect of being--not all alone, because there were lots of other swimmers, and kakayers and motor boats patrolled the swim lane--but still, pretty much alone in your own little world of murky water with flashes of rocky shore or open water caught during breaths in between. It became disorienting extremely quickly: nothing under you, everything around you too far away to really see. It was also very hard to swim in a straight line. I had to interrupt my stroke constantly to steal a glance ahead and line myself up off the next buoy. It probably would have been easier if I had enlisted a personal kayak escort, as some swimmers had done--just line up off your kayaker and forget everything else.

I'm not saying all this to imply that I didn't love it--because I did. I loved the immersion, I loved the extra mental challenge to go along with the physical challenge. Actually, I pretty much hated feeling disoriented and had a very painful air bubble to boot, and by the end I really, really had to pee, but looking back, these are of course the moments we live for. To be challenged, and to push.

After all, open water swimming is kind of like lead climbing. You are there, you are exposed, and you are in a position of commitment because you can't just stop when it gets hard and find immediate relief from this state of challenge. In lead climbing, you've got to get to the top first, or at least to a place where you can put in your next piece of gear if you are really sure you want to bail and don't care that you'll have to leave a really expensive piece of equipment behind in order to do so. In open water swimming, it's not like you can just grab the side or touch down. You can wave to your escort boat and they'll probably be able to get you in a pretty timely fashion--but they aren't all that close to you, and you still have to wave for help before you are really in trouble.

I finished the event way faster than both I and my parents thought I would (1 hour, seven minutes, 56 seconds. I came in 14th place overall out of 61 swimmers and was the 4th placed female to finish. Not bad for 2 weeks of training!) I couldn't even find them when I got out because they were still out in a motor boat on the course following someone much slower who it turned out wasn't me at all. Another thing about these swims is that with matching yellow swim caps, we all look the same from far away. "Good job!" My dad said, "I'm really proud of you. I was really worried you were in over your head when you told me you signed up for this event, and I was worried we couldn't find you and you'd be stuck in the back and discouraged." Gee thanks for the confidence, Dad. But it's true, I'm really not who I used to be, physically, but maybe especially mentally.

I'm kinda getting really into this stuff. Being afraid and uncomfortable and having to really trust myself--and the confidence I gain by being my own, strong, decision-making island. Really pushing my personal fitness by doing physically exerting things in exotic settings. Not saying I'm about to go swim the English Channel or lead climb El Capitan--but you never really know what your limits are until you push them.

Climbing Accident

This weekend at Rumbling Bald an experienced climber died when he rappelled off of the end of his rope.

This was an entirely avoidable mistake that is nonetheless all too easy to commit in a moment of complacency, made by an experienced climber. There are a handful of safety measures to take while rappelling that sometimes we slack off on because we are sure we are in control of the situation, or else are in fact not exerting the level of control of the situation we need to but are not particularly worried about it because we've done this so many times. That razor-sharp clarity of attention to detail is hard to maintain on 100% of a day out on the rock.

I'm not dead yet, so I haven't made the exact same safety mistake this unfortunate person made. I do check safety pretty obsessively. But I have probably had moments of equal complacency, and even if they were just moments that I recovered from, if it's the wrong moment, one moment is enough.

But that is the risk that climbers take, because not taking the risk would be a denial of possibility. Despite public perception, climbing with proper attention to safety is less dangerous than a lot of other activities: swimming, driving or riding in a car, skiing...That is because although defying gravity inserts an automatic level of danger, circumstances remain more in control of the climber than they do in other activities that are dangerous. Climbers choose their level of risk and the equipment when properly used is very good at minimizing it. You just have to make sure you are maintaining that control of the situation, that you fully understand what you are doing with the equipment, constantly, and never move forward when you are less than 100% on it just because that's the flow.

The Intensity of Wild

The federally designated wildernesses near me truly are different even from the national forests and national parks to which they are peripherally attached.  Trails are rougher and aren't blazed, marked, or even completely maintained, and sometimes overgrown old trails that have been let go, animal highways, or just slightly-impacted places from human wandering off course are hard to distinguish from the real trail. An advanced level of navigation with thorough understanding of intended route and topography is needed.

Being there can give one pause, a slight reminder that the safety found in control of surroundings is at present more removed than usual. The trail is all you have connecting you back to that easier world and losing it would be putting yourself at the mercy of a force that humans have mostly conquered yet allow to live on in certain places, one of which you have entered willingly and must now respect.

I tend to be good at spatial thinking and I like being challenged in navigational way, and wilderness is appealing because of the depth of the wild around me, the removal of background sounds of human activity, the real way that nature reveals want she can do if she's left (well, for the most part) devoid of human management.

Yet the salient thing I notice about wilderness is that, no matter how many people I am with, it feels lonely.  I feel lonely there, in a way that isn't necessarily bad but is startlingly real, that fades away when I reach marked trails again even if those trails aren't particularly well visited either.  It's curious how traversing an area where the only sign of human passing is a narrow area of worn down underbrush feels lonely in comparison with areas of slightly more obviously worn down underbrush that are occasionally marked with a colored blaze or sign.  I know that in some ways it's all a farce, as I've only hiked a handful of miles from a paved road and even if the danger of getting lost is real if I'm stupid then I wouldn't have to travel more than twenty miles any direction to encounter civilization again.  Still, in the depth of the forest, loneliness.

Perhaps this is an instinct, a reminder that our rise to civilization was in fact a long struggle against the realities of living in nature untamed, or human-as-intensely-social-creature fear of being without the resources provided by a community of my own kind, or something.  Perhaps this is a kickback from how I felt here when I was younger, an only child dragged frequently into the woods by parents who sought all those Emersonean ideals while being too young to understand them and wanting only to play with children my own age.

*

Rock climbing is also about nature:  the nature of gravity and the nature of irrational fear.  Irrational in the sense that safety gear is rationally in place but instinct to not be in a such a tenuous position as clinging to a rock always remains.  Lead rock climbing is taking that safety gear and putting occasionally between you and it the possibility of a ten? fifteen? twenty? foot fall, perhaps more if your skill at setting up safety gear leaves something to be desired. 

Rock climbing can be pretty too, the geology can look interesting and the view from the top can be spectacular, but the relationship with nature is a more visceral one. It is about the nature of yourself, and how hard you are willing to fight against instinct to achieve something you want--without wavering in wanting it when things get scary.  When I lead climb, every second is a constant battle with myself to keep from giving in and accepting that maybe this isn't something I want bad enough to try until I fail.  It is a constant fight against freeze-and-go-nowhere hesitation.  Climbing is a pact with yourself, that you will trust your abilities enough to continue to further the challenge until it is complete, despite the fact that you can sometimes (although not always, and not so easily when you're ten feet from your last piece of safety gear) bail out.  It is a pact with yourself that you will not sell yourself short and decline to try because of fear or doubt.  The world becomes nothing but the problem in front of you, the mix of sediment and minerals at eye level, the movement of hands, feet, muscles flexing in commitment of going forward into a situation that is not at all certain but must be faced.

The feeling at the top of a lead climb is like nothing else on this planet.

90-Pound-Weakling This

This morning, I went on a measly short run, after hitting the job search hard.

I've already got some calls back, so hitting the job search hard is going well again, for the moment.

I am a pretty terrible runner.  But I'm great and swimming, and not bad at biking.

So I've decided to do a triathlon!  The Hickory Nut Gorge sprint triathlon (meaning, short) in fact.

That's right folks, I'm giving myself until August 28th to shape up.  I'm not really out of shape--because I bike 16 miles to and from work every couple of days and swim like, 2 miles once a week.   I'll need to improve on my ability to run without feeling like I'm gonna vomit.  And I'm not really excited about the sprint nature of this nor sprinting--being someone who withers rather than flourishes under direct athletic competition.

But next time somebody looks at me and assumes a 90 pound weakling, I can tell them that for their information I lead climb, bike 8 miles to work, and do triathlons.

So I'd better go on another run, then.

This Week's Adventures

This week I went backpacking with my uncle and sixteen-year-old wonder-cousin.  She'd read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, and wanted to see what it was about, pre-cursor to her new dream of hiking the Appalachain Trail.  After she gets back from her junior year in Germany, and before she sets off to her ivy league college.

Yeah, I'm related to her.

My uncle, recalling backpacking of the old days, had a heavy and large external frame pack.  He brought a lot of cotton clothes, a lot of heavy, older gear.  I recall those days myself:  why buy all this newfangled technology when the way I've been doing it is just fine, thank you?  In that case you have to learn for yourself, and decide for yourself if the lesson is worth giving up what you are used to.

We set off on a wilderness trail--meaning unmarked and only minimally maintained--that I hadn't been on before.  That wasn't the smartest decision I've ever made, it's true, and not because I'm not a great wilderness navigator, because I am.  But the trails are rougher, and my uncle with his huge pack had to duck under short rhododendrons constantly and ended up slipping on an area of eroded traction and rolling his ankle.

Backpacking important fact:  Your feet are hugely important.

I ended up sort of guiding our group (because that's the kind of leader that I am, a guider, not a dictator, as I've told tons of people in job interviews) to the notion of re-routing.  Getting out of the wilderness and into the regular national forest, where we'd take a trail that was relatively close to the road the whole time.  In a moment of not-so-great forest navigation on my part, I underestimated the length of this new route, so we didn't make it to our revised destination either.  I ended up calling my dad covertly when I randomly found cell service and asking him to pick us up on our third day at a new location, pretty darn far from the car we were supposed to loop back to in that time.  Not sure how my companions felt about that, but, like I said, feet are a big deal, and hiking with an injured foot, especially in nationally designated wilderness, just isn't cool.  They were relieved to not have to spend extra days out to loop back around, compounding the injury all the while.

I think it was a good trip, though it goes to teach my wonder-cousin that in backpacking, the best-laid, and especially, over-ambitously-laid plans of mice and men are fairly often necessary to re-evaluate.  And in my mind, in the face of a foot injury, that's fine.  That's man and nature for you.  The forest terrain is what it is, and yet, we've got that useful pre-frontal cortex to help make the best of it.

Anyway.

We ended up, on my new route, passing through a very nice waterfall/swimming hole area, which used to be a little-known secret.  Since it's only a short distance from a main road, it was destined to not be a secret for long, but still, I was surprised, on a Wednesday afternoon, how quickly a nice little swimming spot (if you like 58 degree water) filled up with boy scouts and their lifeguards, young couples and their dogs, gaggles of middle-aged folks, smokers, and wailing (once they felt the water) two-year-olds.

This is a perfect lead-in for my waterfall rant.

People die every year, all over this area, by falling off of the top of waterfalls.   Hanging around at the top of a waterfall is a ridiculously dangerous thing to do, and warning signs and informational pamphlets to that effect are posted all over the national forest.  (In the wilderness, You're On Your Own Jack, and don't think they're going to send the helicopter in after you).   Yet at all the waterfall swimming holes I've visited--which, absent a real job, I've done a lot of this summer--there are people climbing up next to and near the top of waterfalls.   Children, you ask?  Well, some.  But mostly it's adults.  And the adults with the kids doing it are certainly not protesting.

Have you every heard of Sliding Rock?  Family fun for all, right?  Also known as Bloodbath For The Ridiculously Stupid. 

The state's respose to so many people dying annually in their forestland is to consider a blanket ban on waterfall swimming.

Like that is going to work.

But it would make doing so more aduous for the rest of us, (now having to avoid the enforcement) the ones who know how to be safe about it: to swim only at the bottom, and not to just go jumping in to water whose depth one cannot determine.   And from the perspective of someone who understands and follows these guidelines, being penalized for the stupidity of some people is highly outrageous. 

Yes, I can appreciate the position the state it in.  It is unfortunate but true that in my experience as an outdoor guide and high ropes facilitator, I have observed that adults especially are ridiculously terrible at following safety rules.

But I say, if people want to be stupid even after being warned, that is their business.  If it taxes the state then the ones making the stupid choices can foot the wilderness rescue bill.

It's Just Adrenaline

So, in this entry I get a little bit gushy.  This is not uncharacteristic of me at all, but it's something I've been trying, relatively, to stay away from here.  Be warned.

Yesterday I went on a very spectacular rock climbing trip.

I'm an old hat at rock climbing--which is not the same thing at saying I'm good at it, because I'm really, staunchly, mediocre--so I can differentiate a spectacular climbing day from a not-so-spectacular one.

My completely awesome, competent, confident, intelligent, extroverted and slightly adrenaline-junkie friend (do I seem jealous?), also severely underemployed, has been climbing with me a lot lately.  You may have heard about her in my last entry about climbing and car accidents.  Since, as severely underemployed and getting over the loss of college-inflated self-importance people are not short on time if we are on money, there are ample opportunities for this.  More specifically, we've been getting into *lead* climbing, which, if you've done it, you'll know is a whole 'nother world from normal rock climbing.  More so to people like me than said competent, confident, intelligent yadda yadda friend, who has so far taken it in stride.

Unlike me, who sweats and hyperventilates and shakes hysterically and swears (but haven't teared up yet) my way through it.

Well.  We had found a nice moderate route to lead, and we were both going to do it.  I was in a state that can best be described as morosely immature, because I'd just been rejected for yet again another job in the same sentence that I was reassured that I really had been such an excellent candidate (yet again on the excellent candidate part of the rejection, too).  So even though knowing better (I'm a Challenge By Choice professional, after all, even if only barely employed as such), even though knowing myself, I looked at the route and let her go first.

She did okay.  There was a spot where she slipped, grabbed the rock, and had to breath hard for a few minutes, which is probably on the level of a nervous-break-down for most other people.  She succeeded of course, without falling,  and then it was my turn to climb the thing.  I had to follow her first, to take out the gear she'd put in.

I learned that that was a mistake, because I went from feeling reasonably pumped about doing it lead, to vehemently proclaiming that I would *not* lead it once I'd gotten to the top.  I should have just had her take her own gear down and be do with without realizing what I was getting into.

It wasn't a hard route, but it was slabby face (like, rock face) climbing.  Imagine an almost vertical wall, with minuscule finger holds and little ripples that your feet may or may not stick to.   That fear-factor, that lizard-brain, was kicking into overtime, even though, like I said, I'm a old hat at climbing.  It's the kind of climbing where you can't stop and think, you can't really plan, you just hold on and move by god before you lose the grip and delicate balance that you have.  And deal with the adrenaline.

I'm actually really good at that kind of climbing relative to other kinds, and I find it very satisfying.

But I am a hesitater, and that's why my stomach dropped at the notion of leading the route.  I can handle a lead fall.  Okay, the concept is still scary, but I've taken moderate falls, and I trust the equipment.  Taking a lead fall would probably be damn good for me, because then I wouldn't be afraid of it.  I always feel better after falling and feeling the safety device--the rope--catch me.  A lead fall just involves a longer interval before that happens.

But that feeling.  Of hanging by very little, and of not being able to take time to *think* about it, of just having to act, and like I said, you can't fool your lizard-brain with a silly safety rope.  It's only adrenaline...but I am not an adrenaline junkie.   I have such performance anxiety issues.  I can't take risks, I want to stop and analyze and make sure I'm not *wrong*.  If I'd lead that, there would be no time for right or wrong.  Just action.

I don't want to give up my love of hesistation.

Of course, this can become a metaphor for grander things.  I do hard work in my job search, but I do hesitate before I make phone calls.  I do plan conversations meticulously.  I do hate to look the fool, sound the fool, perform poorly in front of others.  I take actions to avoid having to perform at something...and fail publicly.

Who's afraid of failure?  Who is, consequently, treating this latest rejection with what moping woe-is-me histrionics, considering it a failure even though it really is nothing personal and may in fact just be that they didn't consider their budget well enough?  Who is taking this "failure" as an indication of doom into repeated, future failure, just a little bit?

Who always has to frikkin hesistate before speaking up, sharing, asking questions, taking risks?

Me.

And loads of other human beings.

Don't worry, I am going to go back and lead climb that thing soon.  I hope I do fall, because that will be the best lesson.

I did and do really want that job though, not some other one.  I guess that is their loss.

Actual and Percieved Risk

It irks me to no end that certain health insurance companies can stick an exclusionary rider in their individual coverage policies for any rock climbing related injuries, meaning, to that company, rock climbing is un-insurable--but they're still willing to cover car accidents.

For instance, last Tuesday, I was in a car wreck on the way to going rock climbing.

Don't worry, I'm fine and so is everybody involved, minus the poor high school kid who rear-ended us who is now going to have a high car insurance bill.  There was no need to cash in on that expensive individual health plan just yet.

Anyway.

I'm recalling a study I heard about (on NPR probably) citing the "Lake Wobegon Effect", in which everyone thinks he or she is an above-average driver (Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average).  The saying goes that those who drive faster than you are maniacs, and those slower than you are morons.  Interestingly, this effect applies to other, telling things these days: why AIG and friends still paid their execs obscene bonuses (because our people are above average, as exemplified by how much we pay them), the destruction of recently-graduated college student self-importance by the brutally competitive job market.

As far as driving is concerned, our self-delusion might be explained by the fact that human beings are just not wired to comprehend the true experience, including the danger, of riding in a car.  Our bodies might respond with panic to 60, 70, 80, miles per hour, if we were exposed to the rushing wind or could view oncoming objects directly-- but kept safe in our little boxes, on our little strips of asphalt, our body doesn't feel how easy it would be for us to hurtle at high speeds into other objects that might also be going fast.  Our instinct-brain may not even really understand the concept of that much speed, that not being something we had to deal with while we were evolving.

I suppose I am deluded under the Lake Wobegon Effect:  I sure think other people drive recklessly all the time.  Included in reckless drive are the obvious, as well as (studies show!) things like talking on a cell phone, changing cds, texting--all things I've seen even very level headed, cautious, and sensible people do without a second thought.   This might be because even if (some of us) realize, rationally, that danger is nigh, that amygdala lizard brain, that part whose job is to press our guttural emotional buttons--usually at inopportune times--has no sensory input telling it to complain.  Even when sudden brake lights surprise you, there may be some panic but the situation is still removed, unreal, unless an actual accident happens.  You can go back to texting after a few deep intakes of breath, and perhaps even continue to think yourself a great driver.

Rock climbing is the opposite.  I've encountered many people who think it's ridiculously dangerous, and it is, if you're into that solo free climbing stuff.  But barring the crazies, rock climbing is a sport with ample safeguards in place. Far more people die swimming each year.  Okay, far more people go swimming, but a higher percentage of those die than of those who rock climb.  High friction devices will stop rope from sliding through them when your belayer wants to stop you, and all the brightest physics goes into the design and placement of anchors and gear that holds the rope.  More anchors than needed are aways used,  at least, if you climb with me, and most of the people who trained me.   Those ropes are designed and tested to suspend trucks, people are no problem.

Yet when you're clinging to a rock face and you can't figure out where to put your hands and you reach and feel yourself slipping, even though your rational brain remembers setting the solid anchors holding your rope in place, even if you can see the rope and feel it start to hold your weight...still, that amgydala kicks into high gear.  It knows that heights + your body = potential recipe for harm, and you can't explain things like ropes and safety gear to the part of your brain that you share with lizards.