Reframing Adventure to Help Me Balance Risks in Life and Climbing

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Is climbing selfish? This is a complex ethical question. I don’t pretend to know the “answer,” but I do think about it a lot. There are personal considerations like, “If I were to die on a climb, what does that do to the people who love me and who are left behind?” And there are broader, societal considerations such as, “What is the role of the taxpayer in subsidizing the rescue of people who take these types of voluntary risks?”

And while I do think this calculus is something every climber needs to determine for themselves, I do also feel strongly that it is a calculation that every climber owes to those around them. I firmly believe that - even in an “individualized sport” like climbing - we don’t do anything in a vacuum. What we choose and do has ripple effects that impact those around us, sometimes in very obvious ways, like when an accident takes place, or sometimes in ways that are harder to perceive, such as the worry we create or the time we use up that could be spent elsewhere.

I think my personal views on this topic are somewhat moderate but also maybe slightly controversial. So, I’m not in the extreme camp that thinks of climbing is a purely selfish act. If I did think so, I wouldn’t be climbing. But I do think climbs start out as something that could end up being selfish. In essence, I think climbs are meaningless, and therefore it is incumbent upon us to assign them meaning. If we draw some larger life lessons from climbing, if we use it to bring us together with others, we can draw benefits from our climbs that may warrant some of the potential costs.

For me, anyway, that’s no different than life: we have to find and assign our own meaning to it through our thoughts and actions.

Well, the video isn’t about that topic - at least not directly. But the video is related to the topic, at least in a chain of thought. While there is far more to ethics than simple cost/benefit analyses, those analyses are at least a part of ethical calculus. And if I am trying to way the positives I can extract from climbing against the probabilistic costs of injury or death, then I do find it necessary to increase my benefits and decrease my costs. One way I decrease those costs is by reducing the probability of of those bad outcomes. Some of that probabilistic decrease comes from on-mountain assessments and skills and some of it comes by modulating the activities, themselves.

The video, I encourage you to take a look, is really about modulating activities in order to mitigate risk. I try to find joy in the things that don’t push my limits so that I don’t always have to be out pushing my limits. That doesn’t mean that I never push my limits. I derive a great deal of satisfaction out of moving my comfort zone. But I am keenly aware that I can’t do that all the time or the “law of large numbers” will simply catch up with me: the low probability thing happens when you give it enough opportunities.

But I also don’t want to be miserable when I’m not pushing myself up to threshold. So, I’ve endeavored to try and find different types of fulfilment and joy from less risky activities. That way, I am still living joyous moments, even when I’m not out on my personal edge.