I completed my first muti-pitch traditional climb the other day! It was a very enjoyable experience, and I would like to dissect it.
I hear you asking, “What is multi-pitch traditional climbing?!” Well, dear reader, multi-pitch climbing is a type of rock climbing in which you break a single wall up into multiple rope lengths, typically because the route is longer than the length of one rope. The leader climbs the first pitch, belayed by the follower, sets up a belay station, then belays up the follower, and on and on.
We used this strategy on what could probably be done in one pitch, but the route traversed a ridgeline, generating a lot of drag on the rope. For this reason, the route is broken up into three pitches. This route is unique because it was more traversing than most multi-pitch lines, and each of the bolted belay stations were just the tops of other routes!
Aldous Huxley describes our consciousness as a valve; when the valve is open, it spews an unimaginable, boundless stream of information and knowledge. Of course, if we were always in awe of every part of the world, it would be very hard to get anything done. (Huxley drew a lot of ideas from French philosopher Henri Bergson.) Just looking at a chair could paralyze you with a torrent of abstract thought. Huxley’s idea was that our brains act as a reducing valve, reducing this vast deluge of information to just enough to keep us operable. This would make sure we could, say, walk around, eat, sleep, and procreate without too many worries. However, I find his metaphor disappointing.
I would like to conceive of our consciousness more whimsically. Imagine, say, that we are little calves suckling at the cosmic teat of the “Mind at Large,” as Huxley calls it, drinking enough consciousness to keep us alive, but not so much that we are constantly aware of everything. According to Huxley, psychedelic substances can open up the valve, allowing us to suckle from the teat in a much larger proportion. In this state, we can receive awe and wonder from the most mundane things, like chairs or the creases in our pants. How wonderful!
On the first pitch I found myself rather petrified, staring down the 80-100 ft we had climbed. I was clipped in, sure, but that didn’t entirely neutralize the fear. After the next pitch, though, I found myself in a zone of neutrality. It wasn’t exactly calmness, but it felt like I had pushed the falling and fear out of my mind, focusing on the scenery and belaying. I believe what I experienced was the reducing valve, live, in action! I wanted to do something (climb) and was experiencing a seemingly useless feeling (fear), so I trimmed the excess, or reduced my suckling on the teat, so to speak. What a wondrous experience! It was really a showcase of human adaptability. Even a hundred feet off of the ground, I could put away this root, survival-oriented emotion (fear), and focus on something that is completely extraneous to my survival (climbing)!
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