Who We Are Is How We Climb. Here’s When That Becomes a Problem.

It’s 4 a.m. at the Climber’s Ranch, and my headlamp beams directly into Pete’s face. He mutters something about using the red light setting. I don’t have one. Budget headlamps equal budget etiquette and for him, a blinding wake up. Morning partnership test: failed.

We stumble through the pre-dawn alpine start ritual: bad coffee, no appetite, nervous attempts to take care of morning business. Pete had coached me—two protein bars, some candy, nothing more—but I packed a super-sized apple anyway, because I’m a stubborn mom who packs all the snacks. We shoulder our packs and head up the trail toward Amphitheater Lake—a steady five-mile slog gaining 3,000 feet. The parking lot is nearly empty.

The East Ridge of Disappointment Peak (5.6) in Grand Teton National Park is supposed to be “entry level.” This means it’s a good test run for my Tetons fieldwork. I’m here for a few weeks as part of my American Alpine Club research grant, building on my Know the Ropes study of human factors in climbing accidents. Who we are is how we climb—our habits, archetypes, and social dynamics follow us onto the rock. Indeed, these human factors shape outcomes as much as technical skill. Recognizing their common patterns can help prevent accidents.

My goal in going to the Tetons was to observe how these human factors played out in real time. On this ethnographic field research trip, each pitch we climbed served as a window into how identity, partnership, and climbing culture play out. I expected patterns and data points from my trip. Instead, I found an embodied self, shaped by silence, partnership, fear, and the uneasy growth of self-reliance.

Shifting partner dynamics

The approach takes us two hours and forty-five minutes. When we reach Amphitheater Lake, Pete changes. On trail, he was chatty, cracking jokes, filling the space. At the base of the climb, he is all business: harness on, rope out, no patience for my apple break. The authority gradient, a theme from my research, sets in immediately. Pete defines the pace and the terms; I fall in line. On trail, we were equals. But tied into the rope, his experience outweighs my voice.

Route-finding to the base goes almost smoothly, with only one wrong turn. Soon, we’re standing at the base. The East Ridge stretches above, elegant and jagged. The alpine air is so thin and airy that at times, it’s hard to breathe. I’m not sure whether this is due to sheer exposure, beauty, or the ball of nerves twitching in my stomach. My mind struggles between the desire to live fully in the moment—to lose myself in the beauty before me—and the tightening grip of fear at the sheer exposure of alpine climbing.

Pete had warned me: “When I’m climbing, I don’t talk. Don’t expect conversation at belays. The only words you need in climbing are take, slack, and on/off belay.” I thought he was exaggerating. He wasn’t. Today, he simply says, “all I want to hear is 30 feet,” (meaning when there is 30 feet of rope left). Then he is gone.

I want to protest and yell, “I don’t know what 30 feet of rope looks like!” But I am alone. The rope is our only dialogue.

At first, it feels like abandonment. If Pete wasn’t going to fill the air, my own doubts will. I’m used to guides or partners who talk, swapping shared jokes or beta. Pete gives me none of that and in its absence, something else begins to surface: self-trust. If the rope goes tight, I wait 30 seconds, then it’s safe to climb. No one tells me “on belay.” No one tells me “good job.” It’s just me and granite, cold beneath my fingertips in the morning air.

The rock is friendly—slabs, cracks, and solid edges—but the silence amplifies everything. Fear, yes, but also the heady realization that I’m capable of whatever needs to be done. The way my heart rate spikes when I’m alone at the belay and will myself to peek at the exposure. The eerie ripping sound of the wind over 10,000 feet. My mind reaches for reassurance and finds only the rope.

It’s unnerving. It’s also liberating. I am fucking free, amid this endless spread of jagged peaks in this moment. Climbing feeds my soul with the embodied knowledge that I can do this.

The wind rips across the 1,000-foot-high north face immediately to our right. When it strikes our arête, it sounds like a sheet tearing or a massive rock ripping through the air. It’s freaky, but neither of us says it. Environmental cues matter. Fear is not always a sketchy exposed move but the sound of moving air. Your body registers danger even when logic tells you nothing’s wrong.

The last pitch is a short yet awkward chimney, and suddenly, it’s over. We hike out to the left. Relief washes in. The climbing is done. The rope is coiled. My brain whispers: You made it. You’re safe. As my body relaxes, my stomach unclenches enough for hunger cues to surface, and my mind pushes my feet toward pizza and beer.

The Grey Zone: When vigilance slips

In my research, I’ve labeled the shift that occurs after the crux is the Grey Zone. This describes the point when adrenaline ebbs and vigilance drops, but the hazards remain. Our descent provides a fine example. Hiking leads to scrambling, which leads to fourth and fifth-class downclimbing. Pete is clear, “If you want to rope up, we rope up.”

At first, it’s manageable, the downclimbing straightforward. It becomes steeper and looser. We rope up, and I continue down with an overhead belay. The potential fall grows from inconsequential to a catastrophic 50-foot swing. My chest tightens, and I climb back up to a ledge, adrenaline flooding back in. This is the Grey Zone in real time—the crux behind me, vigilance fading when it should have sharpened. And yet fear, gone minutes ago, returns as my ally: razor-sharp, focused.

Pete eventually finds a half-dead tree that he dubs “bomber.” I remain suspicious. He rappels first. Then I test my system and rappel over the edge. This is the place where caution should scream the loudest and accidents often occur. As soon as my feet touch ground, the flood of relief is so strong that I laugh.

The unexpected descent crux took an hour to solve, but it taught me more than any of the climbing.

Pete’s stripped-down style forced me into independence. No talking at belays, no handholding. At times, it felt authoritarian—he deliberately set the terms, I adapted. But it also gave me agency. Without external reassurance, I learned to rely on myself. Later he said to me, “That’s the difference between someone who has climbed and someone who is a climber.”

I came to the Tetons to study human factors in climbing accidents—how communication, fatigue, authority, and fear shape outcomes. Yet on this climb, those factors weren’t abstract, but real and with consequences.

The Grey Zone wasn’t a theory. It was the moment my brain declared the danger over, only to find myself dangling from a half-dead tree. Authority gradients weren’t something I’d observed in interviews. They were Pete saying, “three words only,” and me learning to thrive in that silence. Fear wasn’t a case study. It was the narrowing of my vision and the pulse in my throat as I weight my rappel.

The day became an ethnography of myself. I became a climber.

Human errors in climbing: Fear, flaws, and lessons from the rock

I think of how often others—Pete included—have seen something in me I can’t quite see in myself. Maybe the point isn’t to chase some perfect vision of courage or strength. The climber that social media tells me I should be. Maybe it’s to notice that even with all my “not-enoughs,” I keep showing up.

Fear is a teacher. Fear sharpened me. I triple-checked systems, trusted my practice and the tiny rituals drilled into me from previous climbs and clinics. Fear made me competent.

But fear is double-edged. It drains you, taxes your brain, leaves you brittle. If every section of the climb had demanded that level of vigilance, I would have cracked. That’s the paradox: Fear keeps you alive, but also wears you down. Pete calls it the functional safeguard. I call it exhausting.

Pete once told me something: “Climbing abides if you stick with it long enough, and you love it for what it is, because it takes from you. If you do that, you get rewarded. This is everybody. We are at war with ourselves. It will give us the lesson we need. We just need to be human enough to learn.”

I think he’s right. My doubts don’t disqualify me. They aren’t flaws to erase; they’re human factors that shape how I move. Fear, self-doubt, hunger for approval—these are as real as loose rock or gear failures.

For me, the doubts will always ride along, but so will the stubbornness to keep moving upward. And the rock? It couldn’t care less—it accepts only the truth of how I move in that moment. In that indifference lies its gift. The rock is constant, always offering the lesson I most need, if I’m human enough to learn it.

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