Fear and Risk in the Mountains

I have recently returned from a four day trek in the Pyrenees. My sister turned 40 earlier this year and her wish was to get a group of girls together to go on an adventure. The original plan was to take a guided trek through an area called the Thousand Lakes, staying in mountain huts venturing through both France and Spain. Whilst the trek was not technical it would be physically demanding. In May, the expectation was for warm days and no snow.

What we got was something entirely different. A few weeks before D-Day, we were told by the expedition company that vast dumps of very late season snow had rendered the mountain huts closed and we had no choice but to change the plan.

So instead, we stayed in a Gite at the base of the mountains and each day took a different route. Each day was totally different and we did more hiking and more climbing than we would have done with plan A. We had snow, blizzards and hail.

Not quite the weather we were expecting but we embraced ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong kit.’ Luckily I had spent some time (and money) on clothing and had exactly what I needed.

Walking poles and crampons - two things I had never used before!

I didn’t spend any time in the mountains as a child but we have discovered a love of them as a family over the past two years. There is something intoxicating and captivating about being in the mountains – the views, the air, the lack of people. Most days we barely saw a soul.

This trip surpassed all my expectations. We climbed and hiked up the side of mountains in crampons (only two weeks ago I didn’t even know what a crampon was), we saw landscapes that were just breathtaking at every turn, we bonded over our shared moments of exhilaration and occasional terror.

Our biggest stroke of luck was that the owner of the expedition company, Rolfe Oostra, happened to be in the Pyrenees at the time and because he had known my sister and her husband for many years, he was our guide.

Rolfe is one of the world’s most extraordinary human beings. He has spent his life climbing the world’s greatest and hardest peaks. He has led 5 expeditions to Everest and I think he said he has climbed Kili 87 times. His stories thrill and shock. A life on the mountains is a life of living on the edge, literally. He has experienced more death than anyone I know.

His philosophy for guiding is to be hands off – let the client find their way, be there when needed (which was a couple of times). Whilst some guides love hearing the words “I couldn’t have done that without you” his goal is that each client can say “I did that, and I did that by myself”.

Of course, we could never have actually done it without him. His stories kept us endlessly entertained and our bellies hurt with laughter at the end of the day when we recalled his one liners. At the bottom of what felt like a sheer cliff (whilst wearing crampons) he said, “find your inner child and climb up there”. When one of the girls slid off the path and in her attempt to get up continued to slide further, he calmly stated “you don’t want to go any further than that”. When walking across snow and ice with a very steep slope down he said, “this really isn’t anything harder that what you have done before, it’s just the fall is a bit crazier” (I think that meant probable death). When my sister pointed to a peak and asked, can we climb up there, he said sure, let’s do it. Halfway up we asked “Rolfe, does it get any harder than this?”. “I don’t know” he said nonchalantly, “I have never been here before”.

There are so many thoughts and lessons I have from this trip. What I know is that pushing yourself outside your comfort zone is an incredible source of satisfaction and joy. We need that as humans. Getting settled into a life of safety and following the well-trodden path is almost certainly a wasted life. I become more sure of that.

One thing that has stuck with me is the moment that we were all the most scared. It was the scramble up a rock face just before we reached La Brèche de Roland, a natural gap in the mountain at around 9200 feet, right on the border between France and Spain (“find your inner child and climb up there”).

Scrambling up here felt like Everest for us!

In the moment, it felt like we were going up 100 feet. In the dining room of our gite that evening, my sister pointed at a shelf on the wall and said “do you think the rock was as high as that”? More belly aching laughter and then we wondered – how high was it actually? Rolfe confirmed the next day that it was around 8 meters (26 feet).

What a tiny little rock face we climbed!

My first thought was – I really want to go back and do that again. (I can see how this gets into your blood). And then I started thinking about risk in the moment, versus risk in hindsight.

In the moment it felt like death. In hindsight it clearly was not. I am not sure what a fall would have meant – definitely some cuts on the sharp rocks, but probably not much more.

And so it is with much of life. Whether it’s starting your own business, or moving to a new country, or taking a trip that lands you outside your comfort zone, or a downturn in the markets, the risk we perceive at the time is warped by our flight or fight response that immediately kicks in and makes us think we are fighting in a war.

It’s only when we look back that we see what an opportunity it was. I felt desperate to relive that moment without the irrational fear of falling.

Likewise, when the markets are crashing it’s only when it’s over do we wish we had put our hard-earned money to work when everything was down.

It’s ok to feel the fear – just don’t act on it. Don’t let it rule you. What a lot we will miss out on in life if we do.

Georgie@libertywealth.ky