Greg Conderacci a top Mt. Kilimanjaro. Greg is on the far left.
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This is a story about how stories can help you climb to the top…or stop you in your tracks.
I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2006. Ernest Hemingway begins his famous short story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” with this epigraph:
"Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain, 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngaje Ngai,” the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude."
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” is fiction. One of the true stories they tell you before you go up is that Mountain Sickness can kill you. Water in your lungs (high altitude pulmonary edema or HAPE) or in your brain (high altitude cerebral edema or HACE) is not good.
I was fortunate enough to be climbing with a couple of medical doctors, both outstanding in their fields and both great guys and solid climbers. On summit day, we set out together from our base camp at 15,000 feet in the wee hours of the morning, hoping to reach the peak shortly after dawn.
It was c-c-c-cold. Real leopard-freezing weather. I didn’t need to look at the thermometer to know it was well below zero. A brutal wind was pushing the wind-chill even lower. We trudged up snaking switchbacks for a couple hours, with the inky black night cut only by our headlamps.
When we stopped for a sorely-need breather, one of the doctors confided, “Greg, I think I am third-spacing my water.” In mountain parlance, that means that instead of the water being safely in Space #1 (your stomach) or Space #2 (your bladder), it has mischievously found its way into either your lungs or your brain -- Space #3.
It was the Mountain Sickness story. The only sure cure would have been to turn around and head back down the mountain. But the trail was dark and steep and dangerous.
“Why do you think you’re third-spacing?” I asked, not wanting to turn back.
“Because I haven’t had to pee in hours,” he replied. Normally, that would be unusual for a couple old guys like us, especially since we had taken care to hydrate well.
“Do you have a headache?” I asked, in my best diagnostician voice.
“No.”
“Having trouble breathing?”
“No.”
“I think you’re OK,” I concluded, realizing that I was diagnosing the doctor when such a practice was probably absurd. The truth is that we both wanted to get to the top pretty badly. And, sometimes, if you wait for the perfect story before you move, the perfect story never comes.
Only afterwards did it occur to me that perhaps the doctor’s own expertise might have been his biggest enemy on the mountain. He wasn’t being silly; he was being smart. He knew, far better than I did, the symptoms and the implications; he just needed someone to tell him another story. Thanks in part to the new story, we both felt better -- and we both made it safely up and home.
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How about you? When did you Taste the Fear or the Triumph? Share a story.
A Taste the Fear is excerpted from the book Getting UP! Supercharging Your Energy by Greg Conderacci. Greg is a consultant, a blogger, and a ultra long distance cyclist. He is also an all-around great guy.
You can purchase his book: Getting Up! Supercharging Your Energy.
Find his energy website: morepersonalenergy.com
Find his energy blog
Find his Consulting
Twitter: @GregsDirt
