Most people are scared to fall. At least that’s what I’ve been told. For me, falling is about as easy as swimming is to a house cat. So as a climber, I thought I had found my tribe. However, after a few weeks into a punishing first season at Rifle Mountain Park, I have to wonder. Just the other day I witnessed a guy I know only as “chain-smoking John” jump from the unclipped anchors of a steep, burly jug haul called Slaggisimo in the famed Arsenal cave, taking a 30-foot ride just for fun. “There’s not a route in this cave that I’ve sent and haven’t jumped from,” I heard him say afterwards. “And hell, that was just a dogging go.”
It seems this is a tradition in Rifle. After clawing up one of the mega routes lining the belly of the Arsenal, climbers will skip the last quickdraw and drop without clipping the anchors. Sometimes they do back flips. But regardless of how they choose to fly through the air, it amazes me because fearing the fall seems so natural. The problem, however, is that the fear often creates a crippling conundrum, one that guards the anchor chains of success and ironically keeps you falling.
“A lot of the people here are still afraid to fall,” my buddy Derek said after whipping big off of the classic Slice of Life (5.13c) in Rifle’s Wicked Cave. Derek sat below his project, stripping the duck tape from his knee-padded legs and added, “But there are a few climbers who are really in tune with their abilities and they aren’t.” He then indulged me with the Canyon’s most recent massive whipper story.
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