Wasatch Tales: Sawyer Wylie's blog: Types of failure.

A view of the south side of Rock Canyon from the run up Squawstruck on Squaw Peak
and a lifetime of untouched stone...if you have to desire to work.

It has been said that there are really only three reasons for failure on a climb. Not strong enough, not good enough, or not brave enough.¹

The last few months have been a rush. My spring semester absolutely flew to the end from overwhelming amounts of tests and projects, and compounding those time consuming activities, the rain, snow, and freezing temperatures in the valley lasting all the way to May had (to my embarrassment) kept my climbing "socked in". I am usually more than excited to climb anything, regardless of how big it is or what the weather is like. But, like I was complaining to the delight of my friends who primarily ski, it has been a skiing spring and not a climbing spring. Weather too warm for ice but cold enough for snow, and precipitation constant enough to keep the powder fresh and but the rock soaking wet were the culprits. And because of my studies my abilities to climb where limited, even considering "rallies" to outside ranges. While I could have found time to boulder, I really just didn't feel like it, I was itching to get into the mountains (probably because this time last year I was in Alaska). So I tried, failed, and have examples of each reason failure exists. While failure can result from any combination of the three core reasons, each example listed fits into one category well enough to classify it as such.

Not strong enough.

As of this post, my friends Paul and Jackson hold the highly coveted (not, I'm absolutely sarcastic) speed record for the local Squawstruck; 3 hours and 43 minutes car-to-car. I have climbed the route before and when Korey wanted to climb it for the first time, I suggested we simul climb it and see how we stacked up. We pulled out a time of about 5 hours total, even with pitching out the upper buttress from fatiguing forearms. Talking with Paul, we concluded it would be easy to drop the official time by a huge margin, both of our teams were never rushing the climbing and a large portion of our time came from the 1.5-2 hours of hiking. In reality this record will be the domain of runners who can climb 5.11.

In the middle portion of the route Korey kept
the moderate pace on the moderate terrain.

Korey in my least favorite portion of the route. Paul and I laughed about
how the pitch Korey is on is Paul's favorite and my least favorite on the route.

Not good enough.

Wanting to develop my ability to both climb on granite and climb trad, I decided to start working on Prowser, a beautiful prow up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Still, even though I have not sent it, it has been a pleasure to learn this route and spend time here.

Still top roping...

Those darn rain clouds never left this spring.

It's quite blank to either side of the prow.

Not brave enough.

Last year when I visited Wheeler Peak for the North East Couloir (The Wheel Deal), we were in t-shirts by mid morning in April, it was hot. Basing my assumptions on last year, I thought that since it was a whole month later, attempting a rock climb in the same basin would be perfect this time of year. Christian and I each brought fleece gloves, a thin fleece jacket and a hat. When we walked into the cirque onto the glacier, we were freezing and the temperature was below zero. We couldn't stay warm even running around and were both scared of the walk off down couloirs with ice hard snow sans crampons, so we high tailed it out.