I remember the first time I found the end. Not somewhere close to the end. Not a place where it was time to play a few mind games to squeeze out just a bit more. The end.
It was May 1st, 2020. The pandemic was in full swing and I had talked myself into becoming an Ironman. I had signed up for the 140.6 in Chattanooga which was to take place in late September–surely enough time to get this silly virus behind us (hahahaha). My type A self was clicking off my training sessions and it was finally time for a test. My plan called for a 50% race simulation day, so I rallied the troops. Since all the pools were closed, we opted for a biathlon sandwich. We would run 5k, bike 56 miles, and then finish it off with a 13.1 mile half marathon.
I drew up the route for all three events. And in true Ironman fashion, I drew one of the toughest 56 mile bike routes that we had done in our training. Go big or go home and whatnot. When the day arrived, I broke out my brand new tri-kit, and twenty of us met at the Jenks bridge in the early AM for the 5k. Problem was; we caught one of those extra windy brutally hot Oklahoma days. It was already 85 degrees before the sun was all the way in the sky and it was only just getting started.
Some of the crew called it a day after the early run and we picked up a few of our other buddies that had signed on for just the cycling portion. It was a pretty typical group ride for the first 20 miles or so, but then the weather and my hilly route began to wear on us all. By the time we rolled to the finish, we were basically all spent. The plan was for 10 of us to knock out the full workout together, but only 3 of us actually started the half marathon.
It took all I had to keep up with my buddies who were alternating 2 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking for the first 3 miles and by the time we got to mile 7, even the intermittent jogs had ceased. I was in full death march. The last 6 miles took north of 2 full hours and then it happened. I got to the Jenks bridge where we started the workout. I was .3 miles from the finish; barely more than one lap around the track–but I couldn’t walk across the bridge. My kids were on the other side and they saw me struggling and started toward me with a cup of water and an energy gel. I remember thinking, “I am going to pass out and throw up…I’m not sure which is coming first.” I laid down on a bench a mere 3 minute easy jog on a normal day from the finish, but I was stuck. I had come to the end.
My kids found me sprawled on the bench, barely conscious. They gave me the gel and water. It took me 5 minutes to get it down and another 5 of laying there for it to begin to revive me. Then I found my feet and stumbled across the rest of the bridge. My friends were cheering for me and waiting to celebrate with chips and salsa. My new tri-kit was caked with salt and for perhaps for the first time in my life, I just couldn’t make myself eat a single chip.
My wife shuttled me home and I lay in bed shivering and cramping for several hours before I started to level out and my appetite began to return. Never before had I been so completely wrecked. It was more than humbling. I was shook.
I had always sort of operated under the presupposition that there was always a little more deep down if you were tough enough to access it, and most of the time that is true. However, my experience on the Jenks bridge is a forever reminder that there exists a place where we’ve gone a step too far to guarantee that we can find our way back home.
Aconcagua Summit Day
I remember the sound the tent was making when I pulled my ear plugs out at 3:30AM on summit morning. It is not unlike the moment when you take off the noise cancelling headphones on a long flight to take a trip to the restroom and the steady roar of the engines rushes in. I knew the wind was blowing hard and I know it would be impossibly cold. Just then Cristian’s hand reached into my tent for my bottle, “Jimmy…hot water.” He filled both of my nalgenes and I began the process of layering up. Thermals under down pants under hard shells…base layers under a jacket under my fleece under my enormous down parka. Then the boots. I lay on my back with my boots above my head and try to give just enough force to pull them on without pulling so hard that I black out—turns out avoiding blacking out is a pretty constant concern north of 20,000ft in elevation.
Now the moment of truth. Time to unzip the tent and enter the wild. I had dreamed of this particular morning for nearly 18 months. Poor Beth fell asleep to me watching Aconcagua videos three dozen times in the weeks leading up to this. The tent flap opens and I stand up, leaning into the wind so as to keep my balance.
I look around expecting a few more people to be out of the tents, but there are only three of us…two climbers and one guide. Since I had been feeling pretty fatigued in the days prior, I had opted to get a one hour head start with the slower group of climbers. The main crew would leave closer to 5:00. Those out early would have longer time to get to the summit, but would also face another hour in the elements while it was still dark. Of those planning the early start, only two of us found our way out of the tent. I strapped on my crampons and the three of us ventured into the darkness.
The cold killed my teammate’s headlamp, so our guide led and I brought up the rear…two small lights between the three of us on an aggressively steep snow slope. To say we were moving slowly is an insult to sloths and turtles. We settled into a rhythm of four tiny steps and four breaths; repeated again and again. I chanted with each step…“Beth, Noah, Ainsley, Eden;” then four labored breaths. Thinking of my people gave me strength and helped to blunt the cold.
Some of the details of the morning are fuzzy for me less than a week later and others are crystal clear. I remember the styrofoam sound our crampons made in the frozen snow slope, I remember how weird it was when our guide out of the blue turned to us and told us he was thinking about proposing to his girlfriend, I remember the awkward struggle to get the cumbersome summit mitts into the loops of my trekking poles, and I remember the elation I felt at the very first moment that the faint glimmers of the sunrise appeared on the horizon.
Without question we were truly suffering, but we were also exhilarated. When we found ourselves at the Independencia hut, I knew I was approaching a breaking point. I had taken quite a few additional 2 minute breaks in the section before the hut, and I honestly thought I might be about to catch the “you’ve given it a great effort but your day is done” talk. Instead, I collapsed against the tiny hut—it’s kind of like the world’s most out of place dog house—and our lead guide looked me in the eyes and told me, “Jimmy…you need to eat and drink something so you can continue.”
I forced down a swig of Tang. I was no fan of Tang before the trip. I cannot imagine the circumstances that would have to conspire for me to consume another drink of it after. I found my way to my feet after a brief almost nap. By this time the rest of our team had joined us. To our surprise, only 4 of them remained. Our initial team of 12 now had only 6 left ascending the mountain.
The section immediately after Independencia is a short but very steep snow slope. Despite my rest at the hut, I was immediately lagging the group. I was assured that I had to ascend the slope, because the entire rest of the route was visible from the top. I finally crested the tiny mountain of snow and found myself on my knees. I didn’t mean to drop to the ground. It just kind of happened. My team stood around me, but there was no judgement. They all understood, and each would have moments were they could no longer stand in the coming hours.
Beyond the slope the route has three distinct sections—the traverse, the canaleta, and the summit ridge. From where we stood on the beginning of a traverse, the summit loomed some 1,200ft nearly directly above us. The traverse would move us around below the summit ridge, then we would have to ascend the steepest and most dangerous section of the route—the canaleta, before a relatively straight forward, though seriously exposed section on the summit ridge. In terms of actual trail mileage, we were only .75 miles from the summit, but our guides said to expect another 5 hours up and then maybe as much as 5 hours to descend back to high camp.
I closed my eyes. For a moment the extreme cold and the deafening wind faded. I knew it was time to be honest. Jimmy…do you honestly have 10 more hours in you? I wanted to summit. I trained for it. We made huge sacrifices to make it happen. For 13 long days, I labored on the mountain to give myself this one shot. But…I knew I didn’t have enough to ensure I could do it safely. There is no bench on a suburban bridge on the side of Aconcagua. If you run out of gas up there; the consequences could be dire.
I spoke up to one of our guides. “Emeliano…I think I can make it to the summit, but I don’t know if I can get down, so I am not going up. I don’t want to pull a guide from the team before I have to, so I will continue until someone else has to go down.”
It was another twenty minutes before another of our teammates accepted that he was ready to abandon the pursuit. I enjoyed those twenty minutes so much. There was no pressure and I hadn’t yet begun the second guessing of my decision. I just took it all in. For just a few moments, we had been among the highest, if not the absolute highest, people in the whole world.
The journey back down to high camp was slow and frustrating and at times emotional. The slopes we had ascended by the faint light of two headlamps proved even steeper in the light of day. We were living in the strange tension between pride for all we had accomplished and disappointment for not finishing the job. Finally, we arrived back at high camp to face for the first time the question I have now answered a couple of hundred times—“El Cumbre?” (Did you summit?).
The Summit Question
It’s not a particularly complicated question—you either stood on the summit or you didn’t. I didn’t. In a world that too often loves simple binaries; it is absolutely true that I just didn’t make it. But the nuance is important here and all the layers matter.
I know it is a bit juvenile of me to feel the need to rationalize my process and offer justification for my struggles on summit day. I don’t deny that my identity took a hit on the mountain and I am still scrambling to make sense of it all. That said, I am genuinely proud of my decision process and commitment to my priorities. I wanted to believe that I was the kind of person who could see the summit and make myself turn around if the situation warranted it, but I just didn’t know if that was true. I do now.
When I first got off the mountain, it really bothered me that I turned around. As I have had some time to reflect upon it, I feel better and better about my decision. Besides the fact that I was completely wrecked and out of gas on summit day; our 16 days on Aconcagua looks like it will prove to be one of the most dangerous stretches in the last two decades on the mountain.
The storms that hammered the slopes with snow in the weeks preceding our trip turned away all of the teams that sought to summit in that window. We arrived on the heels of the storms, so technically, the mountain was summit-able, but the conditions, particularly in the canaleta, were beyond treacherous. Four of our team members made the summit, and several people from other teams found their way to the top as well. None did so without the daring aid of their guide teams, and all assumed very significant risks in the process, but still climbers earned the iconic summit photo.
And yet, our few days at high camp were marked by several serious mountain accidents. The day we attempted to top out, a Japanese lady had to be rescued off the summit. She was snow blind and faced imminent death were it not for a valiant rescue team that pulled her down. We shared a tent with her as medics tended to her injuries in the aftermath. In the 48 hours that we spent descending the mountain, at least four people lost fingers to the cold; one man fell, broke both wrists and a leg, and as of the time I am writing this 5 days later, he has yet to regain consciousness in the Mendoza hospital; and another man took a serious fall and had to have a leg amputated. A member of our team could’ve easily been added to this number were it not for the heroic efforts of one of our guides who threw himself in front of my colleague as he took a fall in the canaleta. Thankfully, my friend managed to survive the incident with nothing more than a separated shoulder.
And this was not just the case of a bunch of amateurs in over their heads. We were graced on the mountain with two of the most famous climbers in the world (both have feature films conveying their climbing exploits and you probably would recognize both names), and they were not spared the carnage. One was evacuated by chopper from camp one due to altitude sickness the day before we sought to summit and the other had a team member face a very significant scare on the mountain.
Aconcagua is a serious mountain in benign conditions. It is more so when covered in ice. There is a reason why so few who challenge her slopes find their way to the summit.
I have learned so much these last three weeks in the Andes and I am certain I will be drawing life lessons from this experience for years to come. I was pushed and strained and tested, and though I had plenty of weak moments on the mountain, I am proud of my effort and the fact that I never let myself get so caught up in the goal that I crossed my predetermined risk threshold. I genuinely wanted to summit, but I wanted to get down safely more. As I sit here now in the Santiago airport with no real injuries but a gently bruised ego, I am grateful for the providence and protection of the Lord, and I am excited to turn the page to my next great adventures.
I hope this is helpful for you. I am going to be writing a bit more in the coming weeks both as a matter of my own personal discipleship and also in hopes to be a blessing to the many people in whose lives God has given us some influence. If you enjoy these posts, please share them and let us know.
Also, we are very actively building our Discipletrek teams for the upcoming 2023 season, including a trip back to Annapurna Base Camp in March, a trip to Iceland in July, and many many more. We would love it if you considered joining one of our adventure teams.
