Gap Year Part 1 by Jackson Wetherill

This essay wins our 2020 Long Essay Contest. To be fair, it was the only entry. But it still would have probably won. Instead of giving Jackson a prize for this essay, alpha climbing will donate $100 to a non-profit organization Jackson has selected: the nonpartisan 501c3 Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute.

Forward by Aaron: Jackson Wetherill from Helena, Montana has been a continual presence in alpha climbing trips since the beginning. It was inspiring to see him venture out on his own this year. This coming-of-age story reflects on many of the common struggles of entry to adulthood. To say that I’m proud of the adult that Jackson is becoming is a gross understatement.

A heads-up: this essay is rated PG-13. It has been slightly edited, but is mostly presented in its original form. There are a few words used that the FCC would deem inappropriate.

For all of high school, and really throughout my entire time climbing, I had dreamed of being a professional climber. Even before I began climbing I aspired to be an Olympic swimmer. I always wanted to be great at something. Well, turns out I’m not that special. That’s an important lesson I learned on my travels, that I’m not special, at least at rock climbing, and it’s okay. It is okay.

While these three months of gap yearing have not been professional in any sense of the word, my life was essentially the one of a pro climber. I was all consumed by climbing; it was what I thought I wanted.

My schedule was rock climbing.

Wake up prepared to climb, go to bed early to climb early the next day, rest and plan around the weather to climb. This was a disaster for me. I found myself bored, lacking intellectual stimulation along with struggling to deal with the constant failure climbing seems to come with. The failure just grew and grew. I thought of myself as a resilient person until I went to the Red River Gorge and fell off 11a. But those jug hauls just have a way of wearing you down. It didn’t help that I was climbing in area that I’d consider my anti style, steep and overhanging compared to vertical technical stuff, but all in all, the failure destroyed my confidence. I wasn’t able to get past it, and that’s on me.

The grass always seemed to be greener on the other side, regardless of where I was mentally or physically in my travels this fall. Grasses can’t always be greener, though.

I thought it was going to be the best three months of my life. There was not a reason it shouldn’t be. On paper at least. That’s another thing I learned on my journey. On paper, things add up neatly. Mathematically. But in real life, they don’t. Feelings are subjective and emotion skews things in whichever way it feels. On paper, I was in the best place to sport climb in the US for the autumn season; however, I was depressed emotionally and did not have the physical psych I was used to. It was incredibly frustrating. To add to that, I was frustrated that I was frustrated. It snowballed. I’d never struggled with mental health issues before, so it was a new endeavor I had to take on, on the road. My friends I made on the road, along with many old mentors, thank you Lohan, Grant, Aaron and Kyle, made this bearable. It was a constant learning experience, my first time on the road, my first time living by myself, my first time cooking, just a lot of firsts. It was not my first when it came to belay jobs though. I gave a lot of those.

When I left Helena, headed to Bozeman to climb with a few of my best friends, I was scared. Nervous. I knew I was getting myself into new situations. I knew after these few days at Natural Bridge I would be on my own. Finding partners. Shit. It was scary. I would have to put myself out there like guys do at bars; this thought petrified me.

The few days I spent in Bozeman I had a blast. Kyle might be one of my favorite humans ever, he is just so enthusiastic about rock climbing and his presence in my life is always great. But soon the inevitable came; I had to leave to go climb at Ten Sleep. To partner find.

I drove to Cody to see a good friend, spent the night there, and then the next day made my way to Ten Sleep. Ten Sleep is one of my favorite areas. Perfectly my style. It’s western limestone!! I showed up to Crag 6, an alpine amphitheater located at the top of cloud peak pass at 10,000 feet. To my luck, as I showed up at the crag, a group of three pulled up next to me. It was a perfect start to the trip. The group of three took me in like I was one of their own. Over the next two weeks I would bounce around Ten Sleep climbing with multiple groups, some I knew, some I did not. I ended up sending my hardest route to date there, a huge confidence booster, and genuinely was having fun rock climbing. I found a groove there; it was phenomenal! I climbed as I had all summer: with confidence and grace.

Soon, though, I felt the urge to leave, so I went to Lander, WY. Again I was partner finding, a nerve racking process especially at Wild Iris, but it worked out. Thank you Leo for being a great, stoked partner! Monos and high altitude limestone; it doesn’t get better than that!!

My ambition, though, created another urge to leave. To the main objective of the trip: the Red. All the hype I had been hearing for years was going to finally come to fruition. It was going to be awesome. A 30 hour drive later, of which was absolute hell, I had arrived. I was climbing with a good friend of mine the entire first week I was there, so I was stoked on that. We had an okay first day, we were both just wrecked from the drive as can be expected. And I thought it just got better from there! At least for the next day. I climbed superbly the next day; I probably had the best day at the Red I had all of my time there…

Then it hit me. Every day after that, for the next three weeks, was filled with failure and depression. There’s no doubt that a large part of ego that played into this mentality. But it’s easier said than done to have a good, learning focused attitude, when you fall on grades you haven’t fallen on since you were 14. A good ego check sure, but past a certain point, it’s just a beat down. I had expectations going in; it was the biggest mistake of my trip. As a former competitor I have always set ambitious goals for myself, and when I don’t meet those goals, well, I get frustrated. A lot of things in life have come easy to me, whether it be sports or school. Except for basketball. But things did not come easy to me in the Red. It kicked my ass. I lost that battle on my second route I climbed there.

I wasn’t able to get past my failure, it was just too much. I was not enjoying climbing anymore. I clearly remember saying to one of my friends “it’s just not clicking here.” And it wasn’t. Every route felt foreign. I wasn’t trusting my feet, overgripping, and for damn sure I was reverting to poor technique. It felt like I took 10 steps back in my climbing. The world had crashed down on me. But the worst part about it, I had just come off of the best summer of climbing I had ever had, and was looking to push my grades even further this fall. I had expectations and ultimately came far short of making them. I struggled with not meeting my goals. My life was devoted to achieving them at the time. But that’s rock climbing, and more generally life. Shit hits the fan more often than not, and it’s your job to reconcile the most you can out of it. Luckily, I had a kick ass crew to keep my spirits up at Miguel’s. I’ll never forget some of the folks I met there; it was a special community.

With all my failure, I decided I needed a mental and physical break from the Red. Sad to leave for a little bit, I was stoked to see my grandmother and the city of Philadelphia for a while. In my time in Philly, I was refreshed, renewed with psych, and powered up from two stellar sessions in the gym. I also met an incredibly talented and nice girl who I can’t wait to climb with again. But my time in Philly had to come to an end, and I drove back to the Red.

My plan in the Red was to stick to stuff in my style, the vertical tech nasty. It was a good plan, until I realized that I had lost all of my steez, confidence, and real psych for climbing. I almost broke down into tears at the crag that day. I belayed a good friend Grant on his big rig, and seeing him psyched on his projected didn’t even get me psyched, which was unlike my mentality. I felt defeated. Broken and unfixable. I climbed the next day in hopes of feeling a bit more of fire, but it just wasn’t there. No fire, no urge. Damn. I felt hopeless doing the one thing that had always been meditative.

I called a good friend and mentor of mine that night. He reminded me that climbing comes in ebbs and flows, and that you’ve got to ride down the river, you can’t control it. And Kyle was right, I was in a big ole ebb, unable to move past it without physically and mentally moving past it. And thus the idea to move my trip with another friend of mine, Kieran, to Saint George was born. At one point I considered throwing in the towel all together, just going back to Montana. But Kyle talked me out that, thankfully.

After enjoying a few pressure free days in the Red, I kissed my sweetie Lohan behind and drove my way across the country. Sleeping in Walmart grew from an uncomfortable thought at the beginning of my trip to a soothing, meditative spot. Wild. My trip to Saint George included a pit stop in Denver to see my friend Walter and climb on my favorite plastic in the world. Crazy how that is what life comes to sometimes, wanting to use your fingers to grab plastic and get to the top of an artificial wall. It feels pretty damn stupid sometimes, but it does it for me, often inspiring me to try harder at that than anything else in my life.

And soon I would arrive in the St. George mecca of limestone, climbing at the historic Virgin River Gorge our first day. It’s pretty incredible to see a wall holding what was the first 14b in America, one of the more famous 14c’s in the world. The pure beauty being overcame by the sweet rush and sound of semis pulling their damn Jake brakes on the interstate a stones throw away from the wall. The lovely syringes and condom wrappers add to the experience at the VRG, it truly is world class in every sense of the word.

But soon came the crushing defeat of not having strength or desire to climb, falling off a grade I typically flash… it happens, it happened. Whatever, just move on. Kieran and I got our asses kicked by those 90s routes that day, but I’m thankful for that experience. It put us in the mindset of “were just gonna enjoy our time here, feel no pressure, because it’s the last time we both are going to be in an area like this devoted to climbing for a little bit of time”. Kieran had an internship lined up in the Yucatan of Mexico for the next four months. I, I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do when I came home, that was a part of my general anxiety at the time. But things seem to work out in the end, even though the end result probably is not what you wanted, I found myself content at the end of many days. Regardless of how I climbed, I was still having fun hanging with some of my best buds.

Day two of our time in Saint George came, the short bouldery routes of the Black and Tan called to Kieran and me. And little did we know, we found our stoke. The most stoke I felt in months, on a heinous v7 boulder problem followed by a v0 romp to the top of the cliff. Small holds and lock offs, its what I’m good at, and when I found that after being deprived of it for so long, I was a junkie getting exposed to a drug for the first time in months. It was intoxicating.

A few more days in the Utah hills provided us with fun experiences and good laughs, but not much sending. I found myself attracted to the beauty of solving the boulder problems within routes, rather than sending them all together. There’s something so innocent and stimulating about throwing yourself at a sequence in all sorts of different ways in hopes of linking from one bolt to the other. I felt alive, and my brain was firing on all cylinders for the first time that entire fall, or since Ten Sleep.

But then came my existential conversation about the how climbing makes no sense. And, it kind of doesn’t. But I think this approach to the world, that just because it has no impact or no real consequence in life, is cynical. It’s easy to get bogged down in this approach, that nothing matters, but I think stuff that inspires you in life does matter. It’s important to find a balance and to make sense of your life in terms that you abide by rather than others. If you don’t let your inspiration or curiosity lead you in life, I don’t know how you’ll be satisfied.

Our time continued onwards in the Utah hills. We climbed with one of our mentors Aaron. Aaron is a funny dude. He’s not normal, and I love that about him. It was refreshing to see an old mate, one who impacted my life so much. It was just fun. I laughed a lot. The simplicity of the time with him in the hills.

Kieran and I decided we were going to go climb the famous Red Rocks route Epinephrine since we were getting so trashed trying to keep sport climbing in the St. George area, so that’s what we did. Thanks Kyle for letting us borrow your gear!! Anyways, we drove to Vegas one night and packed all our gear in a Walmart parking lot. We went to bed early since we had to wake up at 4:30 to get to the climb, and my anxiety crept it. Epinephrine was nothing like either of us had ever attempted. Our first grade V, a very high commitment route, with some chimney climbing. My only experience with chimneys is putting wood in the bottom of them, and Kieran too. So in essence, we could’ve been way over our heads in this process. In the midst of my panic attack we were woken up by the Bronson Patrol of West Side Walmart in Vegas. The dude was nice, which we were appreciative of, but we got the boot from the Walmart. A little driving and I was back to my anxiety — lovely. Eventually I fell asleep, at 2:30, so I got two hours of slumber. Psych.

We got to the parking lot third in line. One problem with a route this well known is there are people always trying to do it. So we busted ass to the base of the cliff and scurried up the first three pitches to find ourselves in queue on the chimney pitches. I think it worked out in the end because we got the technique explained to us by some real trad dads on the ledge. I led the first chimney. And damn, 5.9 never felt so hard. Neither has 5.13, really. I felt insecure and out of my element. It was horrifying, but I thrutched my way to the chains of that pitch.

Kieran took the next lead, a longer chimney with a bit of offwidth in it. And damn am I proud of him. When I got to the belay of that pitch he said “damn bro I didn’t have to try that hard on the two 13s I sent this trip.” Classic.

Sport boys on a big rig.

The rest of the climbing on that route was quite enjoyable. Juggy cracks with tons of mushroom like hands to grab. It was fun, but my feet hurt so much. My feet still hurt, nearly a month later. We got to the top and were lucky to make it down. The descent sucks. It was awful. We couldn’t really move the next day, but that’s how those things go. If it weren’t for the damn descent, I’d do all those routes in Black Velvet Canyon. That place is inspiring.

And soon my guy Kieran had to leave. I’m so thankful for my time with him and his support over the last few years and especially months. He’s a solid dude, and one of my best friends. Give my mans big meat a follow if you will, @kieranhadley.

I went back to St. George to climb with Kyle for a few more days. We did some vert limestoning which was supposed to get my psyched but it wasn’t doing the job. I just didn’t feel like I was climbing. I felt like I was walking on ice. Just insecure, second guessing, not trusting. All the things that make climbing so much harder. And not fun.

Those final days in St. George solidified my feelings and I felt the need to go home. And I did.

When I look back on the trip as a whole I find myself struggling to understand its lessons. I climbed well and then poorly. I fell out of love with rock climbing for a bit. And what does this mean? I think it means three important things:

I think my fall taught me that there is more to life than just grabbing rocks with my hands and pulling up. Dancing up the rock is so much fun. It will always be an outlet for me to find joy. And the actual act of rock climbing is meditative for me. But, what I now understand is how important everything else about rock climbing is. The people at Miguel’s. The relationships you form, those are far more meaningful than getting to the top of a climb without weighting the rope. And not only are the people more important, it’s vital that I have a balance in my life. Climbing, as fun as it is, does not support my brain. I found myself bored and irritated at times due to the lack of intellectual stimulation this fall. I tried reading, but reading and climbing can only get you so far. A balance is key. Finding something other than rock climbing to care about is key.

Two. When something feels awkward or hard, it’s your damn fault, not the rock’s. This one kind of explains itself. Just no more damn excuses. There’s only weakness, not bad conditions, or something like that.

Three. Being goofy and funny makes life bearable. Whether saying “damn dude can your jaw take two BJ’s in a row?” (Belay job), explaining how the game has been changed, or listing to Cardi B’s WAP Lounge version to get hyped, living that life is fun. Or rather it makes it bearable. So thank you to all my friends who help me be my best, goofy self.

Thanks to all who shared this journey with me. I can’t wait to see you again.

Jackson will begin his freshman year at Tufts University next fall. He can be found here: https://406climber.medium.com/about and on instagram @jacksonwetherill. I’m not sure if he tweets yet but maybe you can encourage him to do so.