Rose Tower, Red Rocks, NV
I am a fan of Bruce Tate. First for his work and his books: I discovered him through Better, Faster, Lighter Java during my Java era, then with Beyond Java and From Java to Ruby. He also wrote two excellent online series: secrets of lightweight development and crossing borders. At some point he created the “Paddle Like Hell” blog where he sometimes made associations between his Kayaking passion and his professional life in his posts.
I guess this is one aspect of my life I share with Bruce, a passion for outdoor activities: in my case, rock climbing. I wish I could also share his story telling talent, but that’s another issue…!
I recently did a very nice rock climbing trip to Red Rocks, Nevada. One of the climb was “Olive Oil” a classic, easy, 6 pitches 5.7R trad climb. We chose this route for the relatively short approach: 45 minutes as listed in the topo, its “classic” nature and its “easy” grade. This was the first time Alex and me were doing multi-pitch trad climbing together. We did however share some gym training time, some crag climbing and a few ice climbing sessions. This route seemed like the perfect candidate for a first big climb together. We took off that morning, a bit late, at around 9AM, after sorting and organizing our equipment “rack”. After a 30 minutes drive we made it to the Pine Creek Canyon parking and hit the trail to get to the base of the route. As it happen frequently, we had a hard time finding our way to the base of the Rose Tower and a harder time finding the start of the route. It took us nearly 2hrs before starting the climb. We started climbing the first pitch, at around 11h30-12. A late start. During the climb we where on the lookout for bolted belays, as described in the topo but we never saw any bolts. This is not really a problem, we built our anchors along the way. Aside from the actual technique needed to climb, anchor building is the most critical skill required to do traditional climbing. At some point we had to do a bit of simul-climbing as I reached the end of the rope and needed to get to a ledge higher showing some rock formations that seemed favorable to build an anchor. With the bolts & route finding and the anchor building, the climbing took a bit more time than we anticipated.
After a few pitches we started discussing about the descent strategy: where the hell were the rappel anchors if we didn’t see any bolts on our way up? The topo page we took with us did not give us more information on the descent. We assumed the bolts we were looking for were also the rappel bolts for the descent.
Before starting the climb we decided that 4 o’clock was the time we needed to start the descent if we wanted to make it to the car before dark. at the end of February, it is completely dark at 6 o’clock in Red Rocks. We actually got the the base of the last pitch, a large comfortable ledge, at around 3h30. Knowing it took us around 45 minutes per pitch to climb we had to decide if we wanted to go on and finish the last pitch or bail out now.
We had to make the decision of either going up and taking the risk of ending up in the exact same situation that we were now but 45 minutes later with not much of the day left to deal with a possible descent epic or start going down now. Going down from where we were meant sacrificing some gear to build rappel anchors and rappelling into the “unknown” in what seemed the best possible descent line. So, with the information we had, we decided to start going down now to take advantage of what was left of the day and hope to make it through this “adventure” descent before dark.
We were both nervous for the first rappel as we didn’t know where we were going to end up. The idea is to go down and look for the best place to build the next rappel anchor. We made it to the top of a large pillar where we found a slung tree for the next rappel anchor. On our way down we ended up finding a few anchors and some lost gear, a good indication we were not the only one having to bail out from the route in this rappel line. Our rope got stuck once but we got lucky and found a way to pull it from another angle and avoid having to re climb that section to free it. In the end the descent went relatively well and we got back on the ground at around 5h30.
Later that night, while discussing our day with our friends and looking back at the complete topo we realized that the descent was in fact a walk off. Our error was that we did not carefully read the topo BEFORE the climb. Traditional multi-pitch climbing is never to be underestimated. Preparation and skills are key to avoid potentially dangerous situations.
One aspect of this adventure that struck me afterward was our decision process. In retrospective I believe we took the right decision – given the information we had at that moment. Since we didn’t know the descent was a walk off, we would have been, as we thought, in the exact same situation at the top of the climb, critical minutes later and an extra pitch to rappel down. We finally did a controlled descent, with some padding for possible problems and in the end we made it safely to the ground before dark.
This is where I will draw a parallel with my professional life: entrepreneurship and working with startups involves lots of quick decision taking. All decisions have a direct impact on businesses with limited resources, striving for their survival. An important skill for anyone working with a startup is the ability to make decisions, assume them, move on and focus on what should be done next. Set aside the speculation and tackle other problems. In retrospective it is always easy to judge a decision, but any decision is made in the context of the information available at the moment of making that decision. Some are better than other and lessons can be learned but in the end, decisions must be made!
