The Unsummit
Inspired by events at
Long’s Peak, Colorado (Cheyenne Arapaho land) and Mt. Timpanogos, Utah (Ute land).
With hiking, the goal is obvious: get to the top. It makes sense because the peak is the vision in the sky that’s easy to aim for. Looking up is what draws us out there, at least in part.
But what is it like when you go walk in the woods knowing you’re not going to fulfill the obvious goal? The first time I “unsummited,” it was because the conditions required mountaineering gear and skills I didn’t possess. I drove to the Long’s Peak trailhead in the sleepy two a.m. dark where dusk and dawn feel equally far away. After walking for a few hours, I arrived at my pre-set turnaround point in full sunlight and conditions as close to perfect as possible at ten thousand feet.
But even though I was committed to not summiting, I fell victim to the just-a-little-further mentality. I told myself I wanted to see what it looked like from a bit higher. I had already come all this way. In business terms, I was prioritizing the sunk costs over the risks. I kept going but not long after, my legs started acting wobbly and my breath came faster than it should have. I looked ahead and saw no one, then behind and saw two people stopped at my promised turnaround spot donning their climbing helmets and unwrapping Snickers bars. It’s time, I said to myself and to the alpine lake below. At an unmarked and unremarkable portion of the trail, I turned around.
Everyone coming the other direction asked whether I summited. They were primarily seeking more information about the conditions for their hike, but it was hard not to be irritated at the latent size-up. It stung to say that I hadn’t made it. So after each passerby, I would test the right vocabulary to serve up an appropriate amount of self-deprecation and wise badassery to the next one. I wished I had a T-shirt that said – I can, I just chose not to.
“Would I have thought less about whether I could make it and more about how far I had already come?”
My second unsummit was a month later in a different state with almost exactly the same distance and elevation gain. Just as dawn was yawning, I arrived at an open alpine meadow with flowers for days and warning squeaks form the rock-dwelling pikas. This time, I was with a friend and we had every intention of making it to the top of Utah’s Mt. Timpanogos.
But when we arrived at a saddle where the trail crossed from one face to the other, wind coming all the way from Nevada hurtled over the jagged rock spine. One step earlier, we had been chatting in the warm sun and the next were swiftly donning jackets. We set off slowly in the direction of the blue blazes that marked the general direction of the “trail,” cautious because a fall here meant a few hundred tumbling feet of pointy, head-sized rocks. We stopped at a ledge and looked at each other. “What are you thinking?” I said. “I’m thinking I’m done,” she replied.
The trail curved and I was certain the peak would be visible just ahead. I needed to see that with an urgency that was equally nonsensical and fierce. But I said, “ok, let’s be done,” trying to jolt myself from the summit fever I didn’t know I had. I saw the goosebumps on her skin from a few meters away. “This is scary,” I spoke, reinforcing the entire truth while looking at the valley of tiny square houses and flat surface of the Great Salt Lake. It was a view unlikely to be much different that the one on the peak.
“How quickly that gift of pushing on becomes a stone that we carry.”
I wrestled with our turnaround decision until we re-crossed the ridge line from the rocky windy shade to the sunny flower-filled meadow. A few paces in to this alpine paradise, something loosened enough that I thought one of the straps of my backpack had released. The webbing remained tight; my judgment of our choice did not. Of course we should have stopped. We probably should have done it earlier. “It was absolutely the right decision,” I said as if to cement this thought in the mountain air. The next time we passed through a patch of shade, I shivered. Both because of the temperature drop and because I had been able to ignore that same discomfort times eleven when I only had eyes for the top.
But eerily similar questions as from Long’s Peak arose from passing hikers. “How’s the top? When did you guys start?” Again, we responded with overtones of apology about our inability to reach the obvious and presumed goal.
Yow different would it have been if I had known I wouldn’t make it to the top of Timp like I hadn’t with Long’s? Would it have been harder to wake up early? Easier to bail when it got hard because I knew I wasn’t going to get the “best” view? How would I have spoken differently about to fellow hikers on the trail? Would I have been more willing to stop and take a picture rather than stick to the goal pace? Would I have looked at my watch as often? Would I have thought less about whether I could make it and more about how far I had already come? Would I have cared what it said about how far I’d come when I did? So what is it about if not getting there? Arriving at “the place” is a miniscule fraction of the actual experience, certainly in terms of time and distance.
“Ironically, though, I’m travelling to the world’s highest mountains tomorrow and am going to climb none of them. ”
These are all good questions for future adventures one of which will begin tomorrow. I’m traveling to the world’s highest mountains will climb none of them. The “peak” is going to base camp of Mt. Everest, as I have no desire to ascend the mountain itself. Setting aside the trash, the crowds, the corpses, and the incredible risk, I don’t have the mountaineering background or skills to attempt such a thing so it’s never been on my radar, so it’s different I suppose. But what happens if I don’t even make it to Everest’s skirts?
Honestly, there’s a good chance of it. I have never been at that kind of altitude before, and although I’ve trained with hikes and runs and bike rides, nothing can prepare me for the conditions that lie ahead. But it’s made me think carefully about the why.
I’ve tentatively landed on this: just being among the mountains being enough. I imagine there will be a little extra oomph in the Himalayas, of course, but being able to bathe in the forest and feel a moment or two of flow can happen anywhere. It’s the glory of hearing coyotes howling at the same time a major rockfall is occurring on the peak a few miles away, while at the same time breathing air that is only interrupted by human, animal, and plant respiration.
“When you remove that clarity, it makes room for all the surprises along the way. ”
The kind of people who are called to do things like hike and climb and run and ski are the kind who already possess the grit to push on when they don’t want to. That push can take the form of wake early on a weekend morning, or lacing up shoes at hot o’clock in the afternoon, or pulling out a trail map instead of scrolling Facebook again.
But this very trait, the one that gets us out of bed and to the trailhead and up the incline when our legs are tired, becomes our greatest liability when faced with an early turnaround. Just a little more, we say to ourselves. This is not dissimilar to the phrase we said to ourselves and our legs and our lungs during the first, second, or third thousand vertical feet. It is the precise trait that allowed us to even reach the place where we could consider a turnaround.
How quickly that gift of pushing on becomes a stone that we carry. We all have the sense when we should say not today. We have trained ourselves to ignore those messages from our body in service of continuing to move until we get to another good bit.
So, here’s to many more unsummits. To hikes and bikes and runs and climbs without reaching the peak, the lake, the waterfall, the obvious destination. To – on purpose – not make the goal. Because when you remove that clarity, it makes room for all the surprises along the way.
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