Wednesday, April 11, 2007

One of Us Must Have Mountain Goat Genes. I Think It’s Re

Last Friday evening we went with a couple of friends up one of the lovely canyons here in Salt Lake. One of these people is an avid mountain climber fellow. He’s also a Special Forces dude and probably knows how to kill a man using only his wit, a toothpick and his oddly prehensile toes.

I should preface all this by saying that I’m afraid of heights.

Well, I’m not afraid of heights in the sense that I refuse to go up on high things or anything like that. But I get über-nervous in high places and tend to have small panic attacks when you mix in small children and heights. Certain small people have complained in the past, “Dad! You are holding me too tight! Ouch!” as we gazed out over some high up vista. My deal is that I can sort of feel myself falling and I get all knotted up and I start to hold on to things *really* tightly.

So you can imagine how I felt about having this admittedly *very* experienced climber fellow offered to take us all rock climbing. Nervous would be one way of saying it. Another way to say it would be, “Are you I-N-S-A-N-E? They are little kids!” and “I’m not doing that, even if you install an escalator on the mountain.”

So I stayed at “base camp” and nevously took photos and shouted things like, “Hold onto the rope!” and “Don’t look down!” and the most popular, if pedestrian phrase of the evening, “Holy crap! Be careful!!”

Needeless to say, the kids were totally fine. They have no fear of death, no sense of their own mortality like their father and it really was a pretty easy climb, though I’m NO judge of these things, of course. Tony the Special Forces Tiger is a bit of a safety nut and no one was ever remotely going to fall. Didn’t stop me from freaking out and wetting myself a little, of course.

For some reason I only got shots of Ellis in the climbing gear going up the face of the rock. I also have video of Reha screaming mid-climb, but that’ll have to wait until this weekend to upload.

I don’t need no stinkin’ rope! I don’t even need this helmet.

Watch me scamper up the side of this sheer rack face, Dad! Dad! Why are you crying, Dad?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do have suction cups for hands

Also, mere seconds after she got down she told me she had to pee. Where we anywhere near a porta-potty? Nope. Were we in a watershed area up the canyon? Oh, yes. So what do you do when you have a four year moutain goat who *really* needs to pee? Kind of hold her over a rock and let her pee that way. Luckily most of the pee landed on my foot so I don’t think we ended up soiling the pristine watershed area after all.

Will we be taking up rock climbing as a family hobby now? Probably not, though at least I know that I’ll always end up with a puddle of urine at my feet at the end of the day, no matter what.

1. “Proper footwear” kind of takes on an added dimension, doesn’t it.

   Posted by Radioactive Jam  on  04/11/07  at  09:11 AM

2. Oh Christ, I’m whimpering sympathetically. I am deathly afraid of heights and, I think, seeing my children all roped up and scrambling up cliffs might send me over the edge (pun intended). I’m glad you didn’t hyperventilate and have to have mountain man/eagle scout perform resuscitation.

   Posted by cce  on  04/11/07  at  12:12 PM

3. You are right.  Kids have NO FEAR.  I remember some of the things I used to do....like walking on the rafters in the barn or across the board that dad had between pens for the hogs.  Or, spending hours wandering aimlessly through the woods at our place when I was 3 and not even thinking that anything would happen and therefore not tell my parents where I was going.  Skiing?  My kids have no fear of that either.  Oh to be young again when life was so innocent.

   Posted by Sirdar  on  04/12/07  at  10:12 PM

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