Life Lessons on Capitol Peak

    This past summer, I catalyzed a trip among friends to Capitol Lake in Colorado, where a few of us would have the chance to climb this beautiful mountain. Capitol Peak, has in part, a climbing section, albeit only class 4, but with significant exposure on both sides of the ridge, it seems scary to some and like all mountains, looks even scarier from afar. This look made Candace bow out, so it was just Nick and I walking up to the pass and through a scree field as the sun came up. We had agreed that whatever we decided to do, we would do it together and not separate. Nick has had bad experiences above 12-13 thousand feet before and getting across this ridge while at that elevation raised some concern for him, especially since we had both been at sea level about 36 hours prior. We were both feeling strong going up the scree field and approached the small step of class 4 to get to the summit of K2, where we had decided we would make a go or no go call. I knew already at this point that Nick had some hesitation; he didn’t want to push himself to the point of having a bad time, or giving him some big effort to recover from. After all, we were just on vacation. My ego, however, knew that if I needed this summit, I could drag him up there and down to camp, costing us only a few more hours and the quality of Nick’s vacation. He knew this too. As the first morning sun gave us some warmth, and the rocks of K2’s summit gave us the closest thing to a seat you can find on a ridge such as this, we discussed our plan. After much awe at the beauty of this wild landscape, Nick asked, “What do you want to do?” I had to think about my answer. There was a part of me that would say, “let’s go for it, we are here” but I thought about it more. In that 30 second interval, I really assessed my relationship with activity and more importantly, how that affects those around me. How do my decisions affect my personality as a whole? After a dense 30 seconds of thought, I gave Nick my answer. It was something to the effect of “Let’s just have fun up here, we are in a really cool place and get to move in a really cool way here, let’s enjoy it and turn around before that enjoyment ends.” He agreed. So we played up there, in one of nature’s most harsh and beautiful playgrounds, balancing on rocks with two thousand feet of air beneath us. We enjoyed ourselves, and once we stopped, we turned around and went back. We had plenty of energy to enjoy the rest of our time in Colorado, and we did. 

    Back home, on my Friday morning run with Greg, I told him this story. Greg doesn’t have any context for this type of activity, but I tried my best to explain it to him. After the story, he asked us how close we were to the summit. My best guess is we were about ⅔ of a mile from the summit. His response was “wow, that takes balls to turn around that close.” If my realization of my motivations in the mountains wasn’t enough, Greg had totally changed my perspective on what decision was the harder one to make. I thought it was harder to summit, but Greg made me realize, given the circumstances, it was harder to turn around.

    Activities like this are revealing. They illuminate the truth about relationships, with others and yourself. Since I’ve walked away from powerlifting, I have still felt the egocentric component of myself, that I trained so hard, remain with me. In strength sports, you have to be sure you can do something before you do it. This confidence is a quality you have to train, just like anything else. Before I lifted, I needed this as a person. When I stopped competing, I realized I had too much of it. This quality is one of the best traits that strength training allows you to obtain. Yeah a big squat, bench, or deadlift might impress some people at the gym or your followers on Instagram, but being able to walk into a room with confidence will make the rest of your life and relationships better in more ways than you can quantify. On Capitol Peak, my confidence would have gotten me to the summit, and would have ruined Nick’s vacation. It also would’ve cost me the opportunity to understand my realization about an activity I really enjoy. I do it because I want to enjoy it. I want to express physicality in these unique landscapes. I don’t want to accomplish the thing, as people view it externally. Make the summit and turn around and never return. That day, I got to accomplish my goal, to move in these wonderful places with people that I feel connected to. I would love to go back to Capitol Peak, and play on that ridge. Maybe I will play long enough to get to the highest point of the ridge, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now that I have a better understanding of my goal.

    This realization made me think about other activities in my life and others. Why do we do them? On the surface this may be easy to answer, but really understanding why you choose an activity or why you are making a decision is important to developing you as a person. It is a way to catalyze change in your character, for the better or the worse. Over time, these decisions can make you more confident, helpful, loving, passive, you name it, you can train these qualities just like you can train your physiology to run a marathon or lift a weight. The mind adapts to imposed demands. Choose your demands and let your mind adapt. Find out your why and integrate that with the change you want to see in yourself, in your family, in your world and make it happen. Sometimes the harder thing to do, isn’t the harder thing to do if you know why you are doing it. It hurt to make that decision to turn around on the ridge. At first I thought that was the pain of failure, but it turned out to be the pain of growth, my growth into the person that I want to be in the world.