The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.
― Randy Pausch
When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.
― Ellen DeGeneres
Autumn 2013 has passed in a blur of in and out, out and about, here and there, out everywhere. I knew once it was August, it was December. And, I was right. It’s now December 6th and my week on Aoraki/Mount Cook is over and I’m left to reflect on the life lessons learned, the highs, the lows, the climbing skills progressed, the moments, the decisions, the regrets and everything in between. I see it all as a web of connected life where strands pulled in one direction tug the web this way and then that. From my first posts since returning back to Wanaka, it should be evident that I did not stand on the summit of Aoraki/Mount Cook. I don’t often define the summit as success and not achieving the summit as failure, preferring usually to use the sentiment, “I didn’t get to climb as high as I wanted to.”
And indeed, on this climb, I didn’t get to climb to either the summit nor as high I wanted. I did get to climb, however, and early in the week, even that was in question. I had a fabulous conference in Dunedin and hopped on the bus north to Wanaka. As the day progressed, I felt overcome. My heart raced. My world turned black. I was distressed, scared, and confused. I wanted to be on a bus anywhere else. I tried reading, I tried looking out the window, I tried breathing and meditating. It was hard to break the spell of the heavy weight of anxiety/panic that has descended like a black cloak–at times heavy and smothering.
My last six weeks before New Zealand were filled to breaking with travel, work, and stress. I found it hard to focus on training and preparing for the climb. I’d wished I’d never signed up. I had several conversations with Marian trying to find a mind set that would fit the climb, a goal that fit that situation, a summit that might be possible.
It turned out that I reached the summit by stepping foot on the mountain. I lived those first few days with my heart so stuck in my throat, it could hardly beat. I struggled to sleep, to breath, to think. But I just kept stepping towards the mountain. I acted as if I were going to climb it. I kept hoping and praying that the baby steps would finally wear away at the black velvet encircling my head and I could remember that I loved high mountain spaces and how I am in them.
My mind screamed uncompassionate messages of incompetence and failure to train. I countered with strength of experience and affirmation of goodness. Lydia, my guide, likely intuitively, provided a bridge to remembered competence through frequent observation/complement of strength and skill. I kept the tears at bay. I stayed in place. I didn’t run when every cell in my body demanded the action of RUN. NOW. AWAY. FROM HERE. FROM THIS.
I stayed the course. I set foot on the mountain. I climbed as high as I could Tuesday morning in challenging conditions until a combination of physical/mental/mountain hazard situations led me to decide to stop climbing at the Linda Glacier bergschrund around 3000 metres. We’d been climbing for nearly 4 straight hours with only one short break. It was super windy and cold. My legs felt like jelly and the conditions forced us/me to climb at a pace that was on the outside edge of my fitness. I kept up to the pace but it was taking a huge toil.
Lactic acid started to build. I’d started to slow. I’d started to move with less elegance and more clumsy. I was concerned that my legs were burnt, baked, and fried and I didn’t trust them to take me over the next very steep pitch that had huge fall consequences. I weighed the equation over and over in my mind and in the end, the risks came out too great. I decided to turn and head downhill and get to safety before the softening conditions made the journey that much more challenging and dangerous.
I’m left, of course, to wonder if I could have pushed through. I’m left to wonder if I should have asked to take a longer break and slow the pace now that we were reaching the super steep and exposed terrain. I’m left to wonder if I could have found the will and determination to push through. I’m left to wonder if I had pushed on, if the consequences for not being in top form would be lethal.
I know I can climb Aoraki/Mount Cook. Lydia told me so. Over and over again. And I will. I will return with a huge reserve in the training bank, with greater stamina, and a heart and spirit unbridled by stress and doubt. This climb has nudged me to face a slide into doubt that has been mounting for months, clouding my judgment, and taking a huge toll. I’ve seen a new summit here and it is working again with the steep face of doubt, a challenging yet doable climb-one that will call on my skills and resources and creativity to change the dynamic and stop the slide. It’s as if Aoraki/Mount Cook has provided the context for me to practice self-arrest–to fall down on my ice axe, dig in my toes, stop the slide, and then get up again ready to take another step up the mountain (of life)…or down perhaps if the risks are too great.
As you can see, there has been much personal learning and success in pushing through my distress to climb at all. There were also other successes and joys and high points and other things, besides my inner process that were challenging…in the spirit of the famous movie, I’ve decided to capture them as “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”
The Good:
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
― Napoleon Hill
Climbing with Lydia Bradey and learning so many subtle skills that will shape my climbing for the next few years
Taking on a technical peak that pushed my climbing skills
Getting on the mountain through a crushing period of doubt
The amazing views of Aoraki/Mount Cook
Riding in the front seat of a helicopter twice
Hanging with my climbing family of Lydia, Mark, and Angus
Really hearing Lydia when she said I have good skills
My best feeling alpine start to date (no anxiety, no nausea, ate well, packed well and efficiently)
Climbing for at least two more hours after first thinking that I wanted to stop
Climbing at a hard demanding pace through challenging terrain
Being surrounded by blue, white and black…colours and views that make my spirit soar.
Keeping up to most of the men who were taller and younger
Falling in love with a new range of mountains
Finding a rhythm of stepping and breathing that makes me one with the mountain
Leading two rock climbs (the first time in two decades)
Sharing a few tricks I’d learned with Lydia that she liked enough to adopt.
The Bad:
Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
― Denis Waitley
The questions that regret nurtures.
3000 metres, not 3754
Deciding to climb after the conference, not before.
Deciding not to attend the 12 day skills course before the conference and then the climb afterward (the course providing the mountain hardening and the conference the rest/relax before the climb)
Deciding to prioritize other activities/work/stuff ahead of preparations for Aoraki/Mount Cook
A hugely long intimating summit day
Trying to climb to 3754 after living/hanging at sea level with just one day of acclimatization
The Ugly:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
― Thomas A. Edison
40 cm of new snow that required us to wear snowshoes until the bergschrund (extra weight on top of heavy mountain boots)
Having to traverse a few scary, tiny, narrow crevasse bridges in snowshoes
A howling wind that multiplied the cold
Ice balls the size of cantaloupes and boulders that had recently fallen from ice cliffs that overhang the route
Climbing a debris slope of a recent avalanche
Doubt and the anxiety it propagates
A super heavy pack filled with technical climbing gear (I’d trained with a 25 pounder-I should have made it a 40 pounder to be safe)
Not enough stamina/endurance training (one of the first climbs that I didn’t do ten Signal Hills for prior to leaving)
I’m sure more will come to mind but it’s time to close for now-I have a date with a waterfall in the morning for my last technical skill development in New Zealand. I look forward to celebrating the goods and leaving the bads and uglies to wither and fall away like leaves in autumn.
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
― Maya Angelou
My first view of Aoraki/Mount Cook…This is the view from the National Park Headquarters in the midst of a storm that eventually dropped 40 cm of snow on the mountain.
Because we couldn’t fly out to the mountain, we stopped in at the National Park Headquarters and I enjoyed learning the history of the mountain including the stories of the many women who’ve climbed it. The first woman to reach the summit of Aoraki/Mount Cook was Australian Freda Du Faur in 1910. Betsy Blunden was the first woman to professionally guide the mountain starting in 1928 (she was first woman in the world to work as a professional alpine guide). The first team of all women to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook was in 1953 (demonstrating the increasing skills and independence of women climbers). The team members were Mavis Davidson, Doreen Pickens, and Sheila MacMurray.
Look who else was featured on the displays of the National Park…the one, the only, and my guide, Lydia Bradey. Lydia was the first woman to climb Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen and I believe, remains the only New Zealander to do so to date.
Lydia is very humble about her accomplishments. Here she was kind of enough to post with her picture. You can see she is humouring me!
Our first glance of Aoraki/Mount Cook from our helicopter flight in. This picture gives a good look at the Linda Glacier and the Plateau Hut is on the ridge line that is near the right side of the photo at the midline.
Our first view of Plateau Hut…this “flying in thing” could spoil a girl…though I often think the walk in is a critical part of mountain conditioning. Looking at the terrain, it would be quite the climb just to get to the hut!
I loved that the windows in the hut were also emergency exits and further got a kick out of thinking of nature as a cure for all sorts of personal emergencies.
A team of two heading out towards Mount Dixon to stretch their legs and work on skills.
This was the first view we’d had during our climb of Aoraki/Mount Cook when the sun rose. We headed out of the hut in the pitch darkness at 1:00 am under a sky ablaze with stars. The large peak in the background is Mount Tasman.
Here Lydia is standing on a debris field from an avalanche that occurred the day before. We waited two days after the snow storm for conditions to stabilize and for lots of these kinds of slides to occur. What you can’t see is that this slope was also covered in “ice balls.” This dropped from ice cliffs above and ranged in size from small round ice cube to cantaloupe to large boulder of ice. They were clear, beautiful, and lethal if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Linda Glacier route on Aoraki/Mount Cook is “big terrain” and heavily crevassed. My hat (and helmet) off to the first two teams who broke trail on the morning of our climb. Not only did they have to break trail through 30-40 cm of snow, they had to find bridges over many huge crevasses such as the one that Lydia is standing beside.
The descent was quite warm and here we are celebrating that we are almost back at the hut (seen at the mid line of the photo on the right of the image). You can see that Lydia has herself all protected from the “death star” a.k.a. the sun which is quite powerful both in New Zealand as well as on the glacier…put the two together and you have the recipe for a good sun burn.
A view of the glacier lake at the end of the Tasman Glacier during our helicopter flight out. Did I mention that this “flying out thing” could spoil a girl? The flight out allowed us to spend two days working on my technical rock climbing skills rather than hike/climb out.
Looking down on icebergs that have broken off the Tasman Glacier floating in the lake. The water doesn’t look blue yet because it is full of glacier silt. You can see the changeover to that awesome glacier teal colour in the photo above. More coming about the climb and lessons learned in a subsequent post.
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Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.
― Paulo Coelho
A friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself.
― Steve Lopez
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Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.
― Gary Snyder
Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.
― Tom Stoppard
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
― Maya Angelou
One: Lay out all the climbing gear and double check the list once more.
Two: Package like items with like in lightweight zip bags
Three: Contain all climbing gear and conference clothes in North Face duffel and still have 10 pounds of baggage allowance to spare. Marian’s job in all this is packing supervisor. She makes sure I don’t take too little 🙂 as I am often want to do. 40 pounds including mountaineering gear…I’m pleased!
Starting to get excited now…New Zealand with be my forty-first country that I have visited. The first four days I am there I will be attending (and presenting at) the 6th Annual International Outdoor Education Research Conference in Dunedin. I then transfer to Wanaka for an attempt on Aoraki/Mount Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand. I learned yesterday that I will be climbing with/guided by Lydia Bradey, the first woman to summit Everest without oxygen. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to climb with a woman guide and I feel so lucky and privileged to climb with such an accomplished mountaineer. Aoraki / Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, reaching 3,754 metres.
Although lower than many of the mountains I have climbed, it is a much more technically demanding peak with a super long summit day so it will be one of the hardest mountains I’ve attempted lately. I’m a bit worried that I haven’t put enough training into the reserve bank but as Oma says, “What comes, comes.” My main goal is to have a grand adventure, learn lots from Lydia, return home safely, and see some awesome mountains views…and hopefully another country high point to add to my summit collection.
I leave Saturday morning and arrive there Monday late afternoon. New Zealand is 16.5 hours ahead of Newfoundland time. I return December 8th. It will be one of those fall to spring to winter to spring to winter transition kind of trips. I’ve packed both my hay fever meds as well as my woolies. In August when looking ahead to my fall non-teaching semester, I said, “It is already December.” The sentiment feels true. The semester has been filled with travel, research, and editing…when I get back, the countdown to Christmas will be in full swing and it will soon be time to welcome 2014! My goodness-doesn’t time fly…I’ve been doing this mountain climbing thing for almost a decade!
I’ll try to blog and share updates from my New Zealand adventures. I’m not sure if my sat phone will work but for the first few days I’ll have internet and should be able to post some pictures. Don’t worry if you don’t hear much from me while I am on the trip-I promise a full trip report upon my return. Off to count sheep…(soon I’ll be count in merino ones):-)
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
― John Keats
One can’t be on the topmost rung of a ladder from before, it takes time to reach it, to climb it, one at a time. We struggle so that in this process of climbing we can learn, so that we can limit our impatience and grow stronger than we ever imagined to be.
― Chirag Tulsiani
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
― Mark Twain
If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.
― Yogi Berra
We see in order to move; we move in order to see.
― William Gibson
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
― Czesław Miłosz
Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.
― Lauren DeStefano
The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others.
~Author Unknown
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
― Paulo Coelho
There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying.
― Sarah Dessen
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have wanted you to see out of my eyes so many times.
― Elizabeth Berg
I’ve been on the road for a week or so traveling to the Association for Experiential Education conference in Denver as well as The Leader Within Leadership Retreat at Bishop’s University. The week has been filled with reflection and spending time with dear friends, mentors, and students. I think I have been craving some reflection/setting direction time and I have appreciated all the long chats, walks, workshops, and specifically, a collage making time.
The picture above is the visioning collage I created as part of the Leader Within retreat. Rather than having a set idea/image I was aiming for, I instead, looked through magazines for anything that caught my attention. I then assembled them into the collage above. I had done one 1.5 years ago at the same retreat and it’s insightful to see what has changed and what has stayed the same in my vision/view.
In my presentations, I talk about the need to alternate between our view and our footsteps (our mission and our action). The nature of life is change and thus our vision/view/goals change as well and I’m appreciative of the time and space to do some checking in with myself about my view and where I want to be heading. I did the collage last night and this morning, spent some time writing in reaction to the collage. I wrote the following poem using the words I’d chosen for the collage and I’ll be musing about what path(s) this new view will lead me towards. What’s in your view these days?
The View
Coast to coast ready for adventure
Far, boldly go.
Awe, art, connect wanted.
Coast to coast itinerary
Everything, nothing, both.
The spirit road trip marathon.
Coast to coast mining hope
Rooted in the past
Muse.
Discover hidden adventures
Stories beyond the compass
Renaissance.
Rediscovering experiences
Plan your life on a mission
Map your road trip.
The best of what we’re made of
The trip of a lifetime
Searching good-bye.
Remixed wander
See call of the wild
Nature.
Special delivery
In your words
Beyond home tweet home.
Digital nomad
Exceptional takeoff
Power journey.
Move learn listen
How to age well
Take command.
Find treasure
A slice of heaven
Peak experiences.
Weighing you down?
Where will you go?
Transitions
Relief
Go!
We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become.
― David R. Hawkins
The vast and beautiful world is the home we share together.
― Bryant McGill
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.
― Helen Keller
When someone tells me “no,” it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.
― Karen E. Quinones Miller
Those who lose dreaming are lost.
–Australian Aboriginal Proverb
We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.
― Rick Warren
After our fine morning, we walked directly out from the Anchor Inn and Suites to try out finding the trail that leaves from behind the Twillingate Museum that heads to Back Harbour. All was well as we headed down the road to the cemetery but then we seemed to lose track of which way the track went.
No worries. We could easily travel over the open headland to Back Harbour and appreciated the new view on one of our favourite places on Twillingate North Island. We stopped in on the beach and then headed for Spencer’s Park.
The hills were alive with the vibrant reds of the blueberry bushes.
We walked along one of the ATV trails towards Crow Head but it ended on the top of a hill. We re-traced our steps a bit and then found another track that led us out to the main highway.
Back Harbour is a lovely spot to catch a sunset, walk in old pastures, pick blueberries in season and watch autumn set the hillsides on fire.
We hiked a circle of about 2.5 hours and covered over 8 kilometres before returning to our fine abode at the Anchor Inn. We called our hike a “bash about” because we were making many parts up as we went along and we have been inspired to come back to try a more epic version…we want to come and see if we can walk around the circumference of Twillingate North Island the next time we come. We’ve done enough scouting to think “it will go.” So stay tuned…
Now that we worked up a good appetite on both land and sea, it’s time to head to Georgie’s Restaurant for a delicious dinner to refuel for another fine day of adventure tomorrow.
Driving to and fro to Twillingate, you pass by Prime Berth Twillingate Fishery & Heritage Centre. They are hard to miss as there is a whale skeleton beside their fishing stage just as you cross the causeway onto Twillingate Island.
Captain Dave Boyd started the centre as a tribute to his fishing forefathers and interprets the culture and heritage of the area to all who visit. Today, I had a great adventure of going out on Dave’s boat.
Dave got us all kitted out for the boat in slickers. We started our morning watching mackerel nets being pulled in. Dave was catching mackerel for bait for next year’s crab traps as well as to put some in the freezer. The catch was almost all mackerel with one tom cod and a few herring being snagged as well.
We were joined on the boat by Lindsay Anderson and Dana VanVeller who are on an edible road trip called FEAST. They have been crossing Canada searching for the essence of Canadian food. It was fun to share in their delight of being out on the water on an another awesome autumn day. The sun worked hard to out-power the brisk wind blowing over the water.
As we headed out in the open ocean, the waves got bigger. We headed out to see the Natural Arch in Little Harbour from the sea side-what a treat that was! We’d hiked there a few years ago but today we saw a different side of it.
After a fine time on the water, we headed back to one of our favourite spots for lunch, the Crow’s Nest Cafe once again. The pea soup and chill were delicious (not to mention the peanut butter cheesecake). Sitting in the sun drenched cafe eating a delicious lunch warmed us up both inside and out and we were ready for another afternoon’s worth of adventure.
I wanted to title this post: TA’s Triple A (being that I am so fond of acronyms). It would have stood for TA’s Twillingate Awesome Autumn Adventure! Marian and I put two Twillingate trails together today to have a fine hike we’ve called All Around the Lighthouse! We drove up to the Long Point Lighthouse and found the trailhead sign for the hike.
Rain was predicted so we wanted to get an early start. We aimed to lay down GPS tracks to assist the folks at the Anchor Inn and Suites tell people how to find the trail heads-below is an example of the great community signage that can be found at most trail heads.
The autumn day was crisp and sunny and the predicted rain only threatened and spit a bit. The hills were alive with the rose coloured blueberry bushes. I loved how this one was just poking through the reindeer lichen.
We made sure to look back every once in awhile and see the lighthouse in the distance behind us. The sky was changing dramatically each time the sun poked out from behind the clouds.
New views were revealed each time we came around a corner.
The ocean on this side was in the lee of the headland so was quite calm. The other side was being whipped up into a white capped frenzy by the 60 kph gusts that blew refreshing October winds across our faces.
The hillsides were covered in a mix of green and red!
We collected some spruce “gum”…we’d learned recently that you know spruce resin is mature enough to chew when it turns pink when you chew it. As you can see, ours was aged enough to be great gum (though we now know that it does stick to dental work…quite well).
One of the true pleasures of this hike was seeing the iconic Long Point Lighthouse from many different vantage points.
The halfway mark of the hike passed through the town of Crow Head.
Near the road crossing, we spotted the sign post for the Crow’s Nest Cafe…how fortunate that it was lunch time.
We made ourselves comfy in the sun-drenched cafe and ordered chili, roasted root veggie soup, peanut butter cheesecake and cappuccinos.
What a fine repose and lunch! Perfect for fuelling up for the second half of our hike.
Heading out to Lower Head, we added another root cellar to our Twillingate list.
The clouds continued to dance and flow throughout the afternoon sprinkling the rocks and waves with dappled light.
After rounding Lower Head, the trail led us the Sleepy Cove.
And to the beach…
And eventually, back to the Long Point Lighthouse! What a time we had going “all around the lighthouse.”
The total hike was about 11 kilometres with about 500 meters of elevation gain. Minus lunch and breaks, it took us about 3.5 hours of hiking to connect both trails. Below is the GPS track we captured with the trail heads marked on the map. It’s a fabulous circle hike that can be down without a shuttle and takes in some of Twillingate’s best sights. I give it five stars out of five.
Travel is the discovery of truth; an affirmation of the promise that human kind is far more beautiful than it is flawed. With each trip comes a new optimism that where there is despair and hardship, there are ideas and people just waiting to be energized, to be empowered, to make a difference for good.
― Dan Thompson
We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.
― J.K. Rowling
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
― Maya Angelou
Getting lost is just another way of saying “going exploring.”
― Justina Chen
TA Loeffler's Adventures that Move 