Earlier this year, I finally climbed Mount Anne. This has taken an unlikely amount of time – I’ve been climbing Tasmanian mountains for years, but had never been up one of the island’s signature summits.
A “peak bagging” hobby is great fun, and takes you out to all sorts of interesting places. Some Tasmanians set themselves to climb the Abels, a list of 158 mountains that are at least 1100m high, but the list compiled by the Hobart Walking Club, the one I follow, is far more ridiculous – a total of 481 summits to find your way up. A list that huge seems bigger than most of them.
A small number of people have completed it, but I never will. You have to be obsessive to finish. And there’s a problem: I’m terrified of heights.
This is more common in mountain climbers than you might think. Often, it’s not heights, as such. I’m more than happy sitting on top of a whacking great mountain, or even contouring around a steep slope. What I really hate is exposure – being on the edge of a cliff, with a sheer drop below me. Even looking at pictures of people in these situations makes me nervous; something hollows out my mind and I feel a visceral sense of nope streaking through me.
So I was pleased to get up Mt Anne – with, I admit, the strong encouragement of friends. For the most part, it’s just a long climb up a million steps, but there’s a section towards the end that feels very uncomfortable as you traverse slim ledges beside steep drops. Walkers have died on Mt Anne, and I never wanted to be one of them.
Of course, the problem is mainly in my head – I’d be quite comfortable negotiating the same terrain without the drop. I know this. But it still means there’s a small list of Tasmanian mountains I’m never likely to summit. Federation Peak, for instance. I mean, maybe if someone who knew what they were doing rigged up a reliable set of ropes, but apart from that, I can’t see myself getting there. Fortunately, the list of mountains like that here is relatively small; most bushwalkers never have to cope with them.
Perhaps, though, in a way, that’s actually unfortunate – unless you’re a rock climber, there are few opportunities to get a true head for heights down here. Off-track walkers in Tasmania grow accustomed to all sorts of things that hikers elsewhere might find uncomfortable, like bashing through nightmare scrub all day or dancing across boulder fields. They’re trained in other forms of resilience. Exposure, not so much.
I talk about this on a trip with friends to Esperance Peak, a minor summit in the south with no intimidating cliffs. They describe techniques they’ve used. Taking up rock climbing. The usefulness of exposure therapy – getting exposure to exposure, as it were. Giving your fear of heights its own “name”, to domesticate and separate it from yourself.
Perhaps I’ll do all this. Perhaps I’ll find the time to stand on the edge of cliffs and look down for as long as I can, to settle the horrible claws clutching at my guts. Maybe one day I’ll take it in my stride, shinning up a cliff and then sitting with my legs dangling over the edge, eating my lunch. Maybe that would be fun. Perhaps there’d be some sense of accomplishment, just like I felt on top of Mt Anne.
But perhaps I won’t. And to be honest, I don’t care all that much. Our society emphasises the value of conquering and overcoming your fears, and I can see how for certain types of debilitating anxieties, or just persisting inconveniences, it could be worthwhile beating them. But fear of heights? I can live with that. What does it matter if there are a few mountains I never end up climbing?
I’m comfortable and relaxed with letting the fear sit as a part of me. This feels almost immoral to say in a society where personal development is valued so highly, as though being scared is a kind of failing. But the fact is that there are all sorts of things we never get around to mastering, and parts of those include elements of ourselves. There might be other things we feel are more important to get right.
I’m sure there are other fears like this – a friend once told me about their discomfort with ocean swimming. I suppose they could work hard to overcome it. But does it matter? They were happy swimming in pools, and weren’t particularly bothered by it.
Why should any of the rest of us be?
