In less than two months, I’ll be in Peru. I’ll be there for four weeks. I’m leaving on Independence Day. My palms get sweaty just thinking about it.
That’s a problem of mine. I don’t know if anyone really wants to hear about it, but my hands sweat a lot. Nine months ago it was worse. I would blow on my hands while sitting in class to dry them out.
It’s a rock-climbing thing. Climbers carry a little bag of chalk on the back of their harness to dip their hands in when they get sweaty. 400 feet up it’s good to be able to keep from greasing off the rock. I guess my hands just got accustomed to it. In class this fall I would unconsciously reach behind me only to hit the back of my chair.
A lot of things are like that. This winter I got used to skiing. Between ski patrol and going for fun, I skied 61 days this season. Taking five classes, I had fewer days at USM this semester than I did of skiing. And skiing ended in March.
All season I had only one injury: I popped my shoulder out of joint doing a 180 off a jump. It popped right back in and after a day of rest it was fine. Considering the number of days I was out, having only one injury was great.
Two weeks after I stopped skiing I pulled my groin. I wasn’t doing anything; I just started limping one day. Several days later, as the pain in my groin subsided, I threw out my back while brushing my teeth.
I know it sounds ridiculous but it happened. I was bending over the sink, looking in the mirror, trying to get at those hard-to-reach back-teeth, and I felt it go. My lower back started to hurt and if I didn’t stand up completely straight I would fall over. I didn’t have any strength to support myself.
My body had gotten used to the abuse of skiing over the past three months, and now that I was giving it a break, it was falling apart. Was I getting old? At 23 that hardly seemed to be the answer. Maybe I had grown accustomed to the constant throttling of hard outdoor sports. Or else my body was telling me it was time to find another activity.
Two years ago climbing was everything to me. I worked a day a week and spent the rest of the time on the rock. Rest days were spent climbing easy routes instead of resting. March and April I was in New York climbing instead of skiing in Tuckerman Ravine. All summer I was on Cathedral and Whitehorse, the two huge cliffs in North Conway. It was my summer for climbing.
In May I went to Colorado. In October I went to California. I climbed routes on cliffs larger than anything I had ever seen. All in all I got over 200 days on rock from March to November.
By late November, I was done. Camping in the desert of Utah I came up with excuse after excuse not to climb. The weather looked crappy or my hands were too torn up or something else that was total crap. Whenever I needed one, I had a reason to stay in camp.
When I got home just before Thanksgiving I was thoroughly tired of climbing. Anything and everything else looked better than hanging off a cliff. I started filling out college applications. It was time to move on I decided.
I climbed ice two days that winter. Every time I my partner Ryan called me to see about doing a route, I pled off. I had to work, my girlfriend was coming up, or I was too cooked from ski patrol. Once again, the excuses were abundant.
None of them were true though. I was skiing every day. I was up on Mount Washington, or on the back side of Mount Monroe, or hiking into the Gulf of Slides. I was getting my outdoor days in, but I was skiing instead of climbing.
I skied 80 days that winter. My partners and I were going up into Tuckerman Ravine well into May. I couldn’t get enough. Skiing had become my new climbing. And the skills I had learned on rock and ice let me safely ski routes that most people would never go near.
As the seasons changed, I climbed rock again, but now it was a hobby instead of a passion. I would go out and climb hard, but I didn’t care if it rained or if I couldn’t do a route or if my partner only felt like doing one climb. I was no longer driven. Instead I was just having fun.
School started in the fall. Suddenly I realized I had given up more than just my proximity to the mountains. My entire lifestyle was going to have to change.
It didn’t bother me at first, but by the time the first semester was almost over, the urge to get back on the rock returned. Every day I had off I was searching for partners once again. I was sleeping on floors and couches at friends’ houses for 5 a.m. starts to climb rock routes in the snow, ice routes in the rain, and mountains in 60 mph winds. I got a taste of what it was like when I was driven to climb, but I was still just out having fun.
But then it was ski season. I felt the passion for real again, and I knew I had to be out there this winter. I was able to get all my classes to Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I got my old job back on ski patrol. I skied all the time. The days piled up and so did the homework. Every day school was canceled I was out having fun. My friend Jacob would laugh at me as I stumbled into class on Tuesday mornings barely able to move my legs after the weekend of play.
By the end of the winter, once again I was cooked. I had no interest in skiing, and although Tuckerman Ravine and the rest of Mount Washington were still in great shape, my ski gear was sitting in storage.
Now it’s May. I’ve climbed rock twice so far; the desire just isn’t there. Or at least it isn’t overwhelming. Neither is it for ice. Or for skiing.
My brother is graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with his masters in heat transfer and fluid dynamics. When he asked me to plan a trip to celebrate before he starts working, I said I’d be happy to.
And so it’s Peru. I’ve never been on a trip without the expressed purpose of climbing, skiing, or hiking. I don’t really know what people do when they go to other places if they don’t climb there. But what the hell, it’s time for something new.
The great thing about adventure is that it is dynamic. As long as I have the desire to push myself, no matter what the arena, I can have it. I climb rock, I climb ice, and I ski. And I always will. But these things are recreation, not life. I want to do everything I can before I die. Maybe next will be surfing, or skydiving, or motorcycle racing. Or maybe adventure travel. It’s time to try something new. It’s time for the next adventure.