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| Trekking up Mt. Baker via the Railroad Grade |
Day
0: My anxiety was on overdrive about this adventure for some reason,
but I felt peace in my heart that I needed to do this, so... I
finished packing my pack, loaded up my car, cried a bit, drug my feet
finally leaving my dogs who were being so adorable and lovey and
didn't want me to leave, and hit the road. I needed to make a quick
stop in Salem, and then to REI to pick up the couple of required
carabiners I was missing, and started the long drive to Bellingham.
Got to my hotel, took my last shower for 6 days, and went to bed.
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| Rappelling down a crag at Mt. Erie |
Day
1: Met up at the institute bright and early, went through gear,
unpacked and repacked our bags, and finally loaded up and set out for
a state park to set up camp for the night before heading to a local
crag for some rock climbing lessons. Lots of practice with rope, and
knots, and tying into our harnesses. We got to work on rappelling and
belaying, and some actual climbing, which was totally new to me!
Coming down has been a favorite since the first time I went
canyoneering, but going up.. It's a lot harder to ignore my fear of
heights than with snow and ice! But there is also something
intriguing about it, but hopefully that intrigue goes away! I don't
think I need any new stupid insane hobbies. Then back to camp for the
night.
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| Rappel down, climb up, belay down! |
Day
2: I have never in my life slept through an alarm... Until this day.
I sure hope the rest of my team likes worship music blaring on repeat
in the morning, because they got a good solid half hour of it
carrying through my oh so thin tent walls before I finally woke up.
Broke down camp, packed up, and loaded back into the vans. Made a
detour back to Bellingham to drop off one of the teammates who's
blood sugar crashed during the night and felt it was unwise to go
trekking up Mt. Baker for 5 days. Then headed to the trailhead, and
started the hike in to our first camp. We hiked up an incredible
ridge called Railroad Grade, and found a great camp area on a rock
island surrounded by snow and a waterfall of glacier melt runoff. We
even saw marmots on the way in!
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| Meet Alpine Tim! The guy who got stuck having to pull me out of a crevasse! |
Day
3: One of our guides had to head back to town to visit the dentist
due to an awful tooth ache (poor guy!), so we spent the day working
on snow travel skills (which was quite familiar to me after a few
mountains), then got into the crux of my anxiety causing fears:
practicing self-arrest. I had dreaded this. I had been trying to
avoid thinking about this. I had watched the videos, I knew the
concepts, I'd run through them a million times in my head, and felt
good about being able to pull it off in an emergency when the
necessity of doing it would override my brain freaking out about it,
but... I'd never actually done it. And then I had to practice it in
all 4 fall positions. Including throwing myself down a snow hill head
first on my back. It wasn't pretty. I may have snapped at people
around me and acted like a child at times. If I hadn't been in snow,
I probably would have stamped my foot along with my whining about not
wanting to do it. Mercifully, we then got a bit of a break, and I
spent it retreating to my place of refuge: the Bible. I jumped to
some of my go-to's in Psalms, focusing on God's promises of
protection and of there being no need to fear, and got my head back
on straight. Then it was on to various methods of building snow
anchors and trying them out by hanging the whole group off of them.
In case anyone was wondering, my ice axe was able to anchor 7 of us
yarding on it all at once without budging. Apparently frozen Snickers
bars can hold 6 people though before they fail, so... maybe my ice
axe anchor wasn't so impressive. Then it was back to camp.
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| My awesome tent. My even more awesome view! |
Day
4: Our second guide returned! So we were cleared to start practicing
glacier travel. We started out with some knot tying, and learning all
the various pieces of rigging up for safe glacier travel. Then headed
out to the glacier for a couple of hours of wandering around before
stopping for a break and a lecture about how deadly the sport of
mountaineering is (oh gee, thanks for that...). I appreciated the
cautioning words, and ideas of evaluating risk versus reward, but I
pretty much had to turn my ears off and ignore the discussion to keep
my head in check. And the ICE bracelet on my wrist was not
helping.
The words on it did though: FEAR NOT + GOD IS WITH YOU. As long as
I'm going where God leads me, I don't need to fear. We headed back to
camp and detoured to a really awesome glacial pool on the way. Had
some more knot tying lessons after dinner, then to bed, where I
proceeded to journal lots about some musings I was having... But I'll
visit those later.
Day
5: Crevasse rescue day! We started by breaking down camp, and hiking
a ways further up the mountain and setting up high camp to prep for
our summit bid. Then we set out on the glacier to find a crevasse big
enough for us to jump into... Which wasn't as easy as we would have
thought based on the day before when giant crevasses seemed to be
everywhere! My partner, fondly deemed “Alpine Tim” (we had two
Tim's, both from Tennessee) jumped in first, leaving me to
self-arrest and try to hold him in place while building a snow anchor
to transfer the load to instead of being anchored onto me. Oh. My.
Goodness. I was so frazzled. I knew our instructors had set back-up
lines to all the “victims”, but it still felt like a panic
situation, and I didn't feel strong enough to hold him secure and
build
an anchor. I managed, but it wasn't pretty, and oh my, did it feel
like my harness was going to cut me in two. After building a 6 to 1
mechanical advantage, I was finally able to get poor Tim out of the
crevasse! Then it was my turn... And I must say, jumping in wasn't
nearly as scary as I thought it would be. Jumping over
crevasses,
however? Okay, I might have snapped at people, and stamped my foot,
and got made fun of, and totally failed at my theory of “Don't
think, just do.” I think it was like 4 feet max... But it may as
well have been 10! This girl doesn't throw things, and doesn't jump!
I digress. Tim got me out of the crevasse, then it was back to camp
for some final summit bid preparations, then to bed early!
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| Glacier travel ninja style! I've decided it's the only way not to burn my nose! |
Day
6: I had the most bizarre dreams during my dozing in and out, which
didn't make for the most restful sleep. We were supposed to be on
rope by 2:45, so we could walk out of camp by 3 (an “alpine start”,
for those of you wondering, is usually the norm for climbing
mountains when you'll be traveling near rock/ice fall areas or over
snow bridges, trying to get through those danger zones and back out
while everything is still as frozen and solid as possible before
starting the massive melt and weakening during the heat of the day).
Somehow my setting of my alarm for 2:20 turned into it going off at
2:50... No wonder my rope team was making such a racket outside my
tent so early, they were on time, and I wasn't! So I rushed to get
ready, and was roped in and chowing down my breakfast in about 15
minutes. I was quite impressed with myself! We ended up starting
around 3:30, and worked our way up, up, up. There were lots of
crevasses to navigate around, and we ended up at a dead end, blocked
by giant crevasses without ways to cross them. We would have had to
back track, and try and find another route, but several members of
the team were already feeling pretty knackered, and it was late
enough in the day that we would be compromising the safety of the
team coming back down, especially at the slowed pace for those who
were tired... So we made the decision to turn back, a little over
1,000 feet off the summit. We made it back to camp, broke everything
down, and headed down the mountain. A bunch of us went to dinner in
Bellingham afterward... Not having showered in a week, covered in
trail dust and stinking up a storm—I'm sure, but it was a great end
to the trip. It never ceases to amaze me how much mountains strip
away from you and leave you raw and vulnerable, and the connections
you can make with others while you're in that state. My team was from
all over the country, but just a few days on a mountain with them,
and they become people you have no shame or embarrassment around,
people you look out for, and who look out for you, and people that
you'd put your life in their hands. Mountains are magical like that.
We said our goodbye's, and I headed home... Anxious to see my puppies
and get a well deserved shower (even it it wasn't until 2AM!)
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| Allyson and Geoff keeping me company in the crevasse |
The
things I was pondering most on this trip, and felt God reminding me
of, were really just how strange it all is, how
different I have become, how I've surpassed even who I
felt
I was (not that anyone else could see that person because of all the
freaking out and PTSD nonsense), and how weird it is that there are
still certain things that never fail to cause my anxiety to
flare—stupid simple things. I contrasted the anxiety caused by
practicing self-arrest in front of a group that I needed to have
confidence in my ability to preform this essential skill to the
anxiety caused by something simple like throwing things during a yard
game back when I was in a relationship (which still
causes, but just in one way now, and not two). Trying to see if there
was a connection between the two situations. Sometimes it's easy to
forget how extensive my struggle to protect myself was, how desperate
I was to cling to all the negatives I perceived about myself so I
could have assurance no one would ever be attracted to me, so I'd be
safe, so no one could hurt me again... And how much that 180'ed when
I actually wanted someone to love me. How I was stuck in this battle
of wanting to cling to the negatives, but hide them from him too. To
drive him away with my shortcomings to protect myself, yet strive to
cause him to think highly of me to make him stay because I loved him.
How debilitated I was by the idea that I might fail at something, or
not measure up, and could cause him to think less of me, that I
wouldn't try anything! Like doing nothing is somehow better than just
trying something??
It
took a long time to finally connect the dots on why I reacted the way
I did then, and as much as I'd like to forget that whole ugly bit of
my history, it's something I force myself to remember from time to
time... So I can stay vigilant about how I respond to similar
situations in the present and future. It is still hard to grasp why
simple things can paralyze me even now, and I've pondered and
pondered to see if there was a connection between the two—something
deeper than just anxiety caused by these stupid little things acting
as triggers for me, something like trace cravings of keeping myself
“safe”... I think there was small degree of similarity because I
wanted/needed the group to not see me fail at this so they'd be
confident in me as a teammate on this climb, but really... I think
that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter why certain things are
triggers for me (if it's the things themselves or the people
involved), it just truly matters how I process
them. It's hard to remember that the one judging me most is myself...
I can't change people's perceptions of me, and yes, I've resigned
myself that there will always be stupid little things that I
freak-out about, but...
The
one that thinks the worst of me? It's always me! And that
is
something I can control. When
it came time for my partner to throw himself in the crevasse and
count on me to self-arrest and stop his fall (okay, and
the
back up line...), he did it. I was the one worried and stressed to
the max... Flustering myself because I was worried I'd screw up and
not get him out of there. But I was totally ready to go “farmer”
on that system if I had to... Never underestimate a farm girl. We
might not always have the strength necessary to get a job done like a
man would, but that's when you rely on working smarter and using
sheer determination. Or sometimes,
playing the girl card and getting some strong guy to come over and
help yard on the rope for a second... I'm not above batting my
eyelashes in a pinch. So yes, I need to cut myself some slack
sometimes, cling to my anchors, get my head on straight when I have
to, and just stay focused on who I am in God's eyes, not my own or
anyone else's.
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| The sun starting to break over the top of a mountain never gets old! |
There
is so much cautioning in mountaineering against people just
willy-nilly “tagging summits”. And I get it. There is an
excitement about it that makes you want more, and to see what you're
capable of, and that can sometimes override caution. But for me...
There is also a huge part of me that the more exposure I have to this
life, the more desperately I want nothing to do with it. It's insane.
I rationally understand that it's riskier than other things that
still terrify me and which I irrationally
deem
more dangerous. Yet I find myself wanting more of it... I know I
could walk away from it all, never claim another summit, and be just
fine. It's not what provides me any sense of worth or fulfillment,
but...
I
still want more of it. And that scares me. And then things happen
that make me know it's what I'm supposed to do, and that can scare me
even more, wondering how far down this rabbit hole God is going to
lead me. Asking Him what the heck He's up to with all of this. Today,
I was actually home and was able to make it to church for the first
time in weeks. I woke up in the best mood, excited to put on a dress,
fix my hair, slap on some makeup that has gone untouched for weeks,
and drive to my beloved church in Salem. I almost cried on the way up
because I was so incredibly excited, to worship God, to thank Him for
all He's been doing in my life, and the overwhelming feeling of peace
and trust that He has a plan and is at work in ways beyond my ability
to fathom. When He fills your cup to overflow that
much
because of just one
morning
in church??? I know He's blessing my limited time, the weekends away
to climb mountains, the missed weeks of Bible study and church and
worship. I know He's rushing in to meet me in the small moments of
time I have, and filling me up enough to carry me through to the next
small block of time... I know He's paving the way for even more
adventures on the horizon, opportunities for Him to reveal Himself to
me even more. Even when they terrify me, I find He's whispering on my
heart that He's right there with me and filling me with the desire to
keep going... Reminding me that I don't need to be afraid. So onward
and upward I shall go! Until He relents and gives me a more boring
path at least.
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| So grateful for this amazing group! Can't wait to see what the future has in store for them all :) |
