reassessing risk

I live my life by virtue of active risk assessments.... part of the whole "living purposefully" thing. Everything from deciding whether to top rope or lead (something I'm just learning to do) to whether to drink until I know that my head is going to hurt tomorrow to who I date and am friends with. Making purposeful decisions and accepting the consequences knowingly. Weighing the possibility with the consequences in an active way instead of puddling along waiting for life to happen to me. High possibility and low consequence, I'm OK with that. Low possibility but high consequence (as in climbing), not so OK with that. Does that make sense?

My friend died in such a horrible and senseless way.... she and her partner, who are both very experienced and active climbers, were using a new rope that not only has a mark in the middle, but also 5m from both ends. My understanding is that she was cleaning the climb and only threaded 5m through her ATC thinking it was the centre mark. Didn’t tie a knot on the end, her partner wasn’t watching to see if both ends were on the ground. She rapped off the end of the rope and fell about 25m and died shortly after impact. It’s fucking horrific to think about. A good friend of mine is friends with the two guys who were climbing next to them and were first on the scene. He won’t tell me any other details now but says that in time he will. I think that’s a good idea.

For me it brings up all sorts of issues about my own level of risk and I have been oscillating between wanting to amp up my risk, climb harder, surf bigger waves, fall head over heels in love (in the “live life as if it’s your last day” genre) to wanting to chuck all the risky sports that I do in an attempt to be “responsible”.

Death is so much easier to accept when you can see how different that person was from you – drug addicts, street racers, bar fighters, aggro athletes hucking themselves into anything and everything with a devil-may-care attitude. It’s harder to process when that person could just as easily have been me. She was my age, someone I thought of as a cautious, careful and graceful climber, not at all someone I would have thought of as a loose cannon. The last time I saw her we were talking about doing some multi-pitching together in Squamish and a trip to Red Rocks in October.

I’m still processing and am hoping that if anything, her death will make me reassess my personal comfort zones and come out a stronger person in the end….. that’s the hope anyways.