Plot Twist!
On poking holes in the stories we tell ourselves about what we can do.
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“Lololololol there is zero percent chance I’m getting to the top of that mountain today,” I laughed, as we got our first peek at the summit of Mount Thielsen. The intimidating spire towered over the steep and snowy mountainside. It looked like an alpine torture device, used to terrify climbers who misbehaved up high. It was impossible to imagine a scenario in which I would stand on that precarious perch without someone airlifting my body to the highest bit of rock.
We were a couple of miles up the lower, more gradual slope of this shield volcano. My friends wanted to get out on Thielsen while the conditions were prime for summitting: with most of the upper mountain still covered in snow, but the summit block melted out into dry rock.
I had joined purely for the snowy portion of the outing. I knew that the summit pinnacle involved a heaping dose of exposure, as it towered over thousands of feet of plummeting mountainside. And it required hands-on-rock scrambling – something I might feel comfortable doing approximately 2.5 feet off the ground, but definitely not 2.5 thousand feet up in the sky. The fact that a fall from those rocks would result in serious injury – or much worse – did not make it seem like a place for me to hang out. It was not in my wheelhouse, I insisted.
But my friends were trying to convince me otherwise.
“Don’t write yourself out!” my boyfriend Ian fired back. “You are very capable of every move on that scramble!”
“You’re coming up with us!” Stacy cheered.
It’s volcano season here in the Pacific Northwest, when the biggest and most spectacular mountains in the Cascade range are in prime shape for climbing and skiing. The time of year when people chase bigger and spicier objectives in the mountains.
And while I enjoy being one of these people and pushing myself and my limits on these volcanos, I have decided that there is a very real limit to my limits.
And my most limiting factor is my overwhelming fear of exposure and heights. I get quite uncomfortable when trying to move on terrain that dangles over a steep or cliffy part of the mountain. I do not like looking down a slope and finding it easy to imagine my ragged body tumbling to its imminent demise.
That fear and uneasiness has left me crying into my sunglasses, bailing on spicier objectives, and moving with more caution than a student driver on exposed terrain.
And on the side of Mount Thielsen, it had me counting myself out before I’d even tried. While I believed that I was physically capable of making the moves to scramble to the top of the summit, I was 1000 percent certain that I’d be too scared to do it - and so obviously I just couldn’t do it at all.
“I am a wimp up high, and so I cannot climb fill-in-the-blank-mountain,” is a story I’ve told myself over and over and over again. And it was the story I had on-repeat in my head as we climbed toward the menacing summit of Mount Thielsen.
“Did you used to be afraid of steep stuff and exposure?” I asked my friend Stacy as we traversed a snowfield higher up the mountain. I’m in awe of the things Stacy can do in climbing and mountaineering – like lengthy multi-pitches where she scales hundreds of feet of vertical rock in one go.
“I’m still afraid of it!” she yelped. “But I lie to myself and say that I’m not while I’m on it so I can keep going.”
“I’m definitely nervous on exposed stuff,” Julian agreed. “Like this slope we’re on now. This is scary. I don’t want to fall here!”
I glanced down at the steep snow that plummeted below us into a dramatic abyss. He was right, a fall here would not be great.
But I was moving over the steeper terrain with more confidence than I’d expected. And more ease than I had told myself was possible at the start of the day. I was starting to poke holes in these stories I was spewing all over the mountain about what I could do - or, more accurately, what I couldn’t.
And the fact that my very alpine-savvy friends also experienced fear on spicy and dicey terrain helped me question the validity of this tale I was spinning about my limits.
“Could I be very afraid of the exposure and still do something like summit this mountain?”
I thought a lot about self-belief and self-defeat while I kept kicking my crampons into the snow and moving higher up Thielsen.
There are so many other big and scary endeavors that I have decided to chase instead of letting my doubts and fears shut me down. Things that have felt more-than-a-little bold and more-than-a-little uncomfortable, but I’ve decided to give myself a chance and try anyway.
Like when I went after the FKT on the Oregon, even though that seemed outrageously outlandish. Or when I ran my marathon PR, and leaned into my faster pace and believed I could shave 20 minutes off my time, instead of backing down. Or when I decided to submit my first piece of writing for publication or to work on a book proposal.
With all of these big and scary things, I imagined a story about what I might be able to do, instead of dooming myself to a failed ending. So why wasn’t I giving myself the same chance with the tip-top of Thielsen?
When we got to the last small ledge before the final push up to the summit block, I dropped my skis and grabbed my climbing shoes out of my bag, the footwear needed for that final and terrifying pile of steep and exposed rocks.
I was still telling myself, and my friends, that there was no way in hell that I could actually summit, but as I latched my climbing shoes to my belt loop and kept going, I was leaving a little space for a plot twist.
We picked our way up the final snowfield and made it to the bare rocks, baking in the heat of the alpine sun. I yanked off my ski boots and crampons and pulled on my climbing shoes.
I watched Julian and Stacy both scale the first few rocks with astonishing ease. And I gave myself a pep talk to just try one move. To just give myself a little chance.
I started to grab onto the rock and hoist myself up, but the dramatic drop below the summit got in my head. The earth disappeared for thousands of feet in every direction. My foot was quivering with fear.
“I can’t do this,” I yelled up at my friends, and carefully lowered myself back down to the ledge below.
“Yes you can!” they cried from above.
As I stood there and looked up at my friends, I thought about all of those other very scary things that I’ve done with the help of some self-belief. I thought about my friends pushing through their own fears to keep going up the mountain. And I thought about whether I wanted to give myself a chance to reach that summit or succumb to the narrative that I couldn’t do it.
I looked back up at the rock and decided to start telling myself a different story.
“You can do this, Emily. You can make these moves. You can push through fear. You can do hard and scary things.”
I grabbed ahold of the rock again. And wedged my foot into a crevice on the boulder, pulling and pushing myself up, heart drumming, adrenaline pulsing, fears raging. I made it to the next perch. I exhaled a shaky breath.
I had actually gotten through the first move. I was doing a thing that I had told myself was 1000 percent impossible.
I was still very aware of the exposure. I was still beyond terrified. But I was doing it.
And I kept doing it. Move-by-move-by-heart-pumping-palm-sweating-move.
And at some point on that perilous scramble up the summit pinnacle, I totally ditched that story about how I couldn’t get to the top, and started to tell myself that I could and I would.
And I did.
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