Why are you standing on the ledge?
Getting the same drug from a different dealer
The most actionable advice I received last year came from a friend who called me out for standing on a ledge.
Are you standing on a ledge because of how it makes you look in front of others or for how it makes you feel?
I love to climb rocks. When I was younger, I especially liked how it felt to climb rocks without a rope. Nothing wildly challenging, but dangerous enough that if I made a mistake, it could be a life threatening one. In climbing grading, I would aim to free solo no higher than ~5.7--still a novice rating.
With friends, I circled back to the flatirons in Boulder a number of times. These are thousand-plus foot rock formations jutting out of the Colorado plains right at the phase change into Rocky Mountains. There are over 1400 documented climbing routes here that are graded mostly in the 5.3-5.6 range with some more challenging opportunities to be found.
Close to a decade ago now, 2 friends and I found one such challenge. Because we were young and naive, we never planned our routes to the top when starting at the foot of the rock face. We would only pick where we were going to start from and then make our way.
On this particular adventure, we decided to veer left of the face into some steeper terrain. Most of the flatirons are at a 50-55 degree pitch--which to us was basically scrambling--and so we were seeking some rock to climb that was closer to a 90 degree pitch. Still closer to climbing a ladder than mimicking Spider-Man in terms of difficulty, but something to bump up the adrenaline while hundreds of feet off the ground.
At the three-quarter mark and a good hour or so into the climb, we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle. The wall has gotten very steep, and is pushing closer to a 5.9 now in terms of difficulty--still intermediate, but not something we’re comfortable on without safety gear, especially at around 750 feet from the base.
Climbing down is much harder than climbing up, so back tracking to safer territory is not an option. To our right is the wide open rock face. Up and to the left we can see there is a crack in the rock that is more appealing because we figure we can wedge ourselves through it more safely than climbing the open face.
Once we’re inside, the crack doesn’t narrow as much as we’d hoped. It’s been carved out further by water and is even still wet in some areas. We are each doing the splits inside between two increasingly smooth faces as we continue our ascent.
At this point, we’re considering taking inspiration from Kuzco and Pacha in The Emperor’s New Groove and wedging our backs against each other in a chimney-climbing maneuver to ascend further.
We don’t. Instead we wedge ourselves firmly enough in respective positions that we pause and take stock of our situation. This is quite sketchy. While we are safely wedged in a crack for now, a foot slip that fails to recover could still send one of us tumbling down with no hopes of stopping for hundreds of feet. If a foot slip happens for the person in the lead, then they could also take the other two of us out with them.
The question turns to who is the best climber in the group to go ahead. With modest deliberation on this we conclude it’s our pal Nick. The plan is to let Nick climb ahead to give us beta--a term used to denote the sequence of movements used to overcome a problem when climbing.
Nick climbs ahead and lets us know with some grace, “guys, I don’t think you’ve got this beta in you.” Well- shoot.
Plans change. Nick continues climbing ahead while we wait. Nick spends his summers as a mountain guide in Alaska. He is a capable outdoorsman. Thankfully for us, he brought some paracord with him. Just enough so that a few minutes later he drops us down a line that is secured on a rock chip he found up ahead.
Taking turns the other two of us wrap it around our palm, and use it as leverage to get out of this butthole of a rock as we were calling it at that point.
That was the crux. Smooth sailing to the top from there. We took the hiking trail back down.
Despite the moment of life threatening concern, I look back on this memory and the feeling it generates fondly.
And so I am back in Missouri in September of ‘25 and considering how to answer:
Are you standing on a ledge because of how it makes you look in front of others or for how it makes you feel?
I stand on the ledge because of the pleasure I experience with risk. The feeling is like a hit of nicotine or the morning’s first cup of coffee--but better.
“Well, getting your fix by putting your life at risk seems antithetical to everything you claim to be for. In the future why don’t you--when craving a bump of risk--cold email a billionaire or take a business risk instead.”
I've been climbing differently since.
-Benjamin Anderson
For Nick and Sam, who still inspire me with their adventures.
