Gravity Never Turns Off

This ridiculous cycle of nervousness mixed with excitement has been on a whole new level the past few days. I’m not sure if you asked either of us what we were nervous about that we’d really have an answer. The fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all, right? So as we go through the ringer in our minds, we keep telling people, especially our own mothers, that it’s totally safe because we’re going with one of the greatest climbers alive. We say that the risk is so low because everything is double and triple checked. And as you keep saying this over and over, out loud and in your head, you expect to have everything put to ease when you finally meet your personal safety net in-person and ask him all of the questions you’ve saved up. But Timmy is honest and doesn’t really sugar coat things. He is very deliberate when he speaks about climbing and you can tell he’s razor sharp when it comes to the process of big wall climbing.

But every once in a while he says something that makes you ten times more scared than you were two days ago. Heath asked if there was always two ropes attached to you at all times, like was one for climbing and the second as a fail safe, and you could tell he expected the answer to be yes. But when Timmy said “no, one rope” it finally set in. It finally became a reality that everything we had rested on one piece of equipment. The fucking rope. After the nervous laughing died down, Timmy hit us with some climber humor: