Steve

    This week, I got a text about a good friend from my past. I'd mentioned before that I used to spend time rock climbing in my younger days, and there was a group of us who always climbed together. Steve, was the de facto leader of our group. He was always finding new places and crags for us to climb, and taught us how to set up the ropes to climb safely. Steve moved out to Utah, where he works as a therapist for kids in a wilderness program. It's the perfect job for him, because he gets to help kids in need by taking them to the outdoors and teaching them life and survival skills. It's been far too long since I've seen him, but we keep in touch through phone calls and texts.
    Steve has been bugging our crew about coming out to Colorado to ice climb with him. Ice climbing is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine climbing a frozen waterfall and you'll get the idea. You still use ropes and a harness, but you wear special cleats called crampons on your boots, and use ice "axes" to hack into the ice and climb up.
  One evening, I got a text that really scared me. Steve had been climbing solo out in Colorado and had fallen off a climb.  Luckily, he survived, but was in the hospital and was busted up pretty badly. I received a picture of him in the text, but am not going to post it here. It's just too scary. Steve has no memory of the fall, so from what we can tell, he fell at least 30 feet. He has multple broken bones in his face and nose, and lost a lot of blood. His ice axe damaged his knee when he landed on it, but luckily he won't need surgery. He had a broken leg at his ankle, and had to have it surgically reconstructed. Since he was climbing solo, he had to crawl out of the canyon to find help. He was lucky enough to find some others on a snowmobile that day, and they drove him down the mountain to a waiting ambulance.
    Steve spent 5 days in the hospital. After he got out, we caught up about the event over the phone. He's on the mend, but obviously can't return to work until his leg heals. He won't need any facial surgery as the bones are going to heal on their own. I was so relieved that he survived, and realized just how tough my friend is. I don't know if I would have the strength to crawl out of a canyon after a fall like that. We joked about it, but it made me realize how dangerous climbing can be if you're not careful. I would still go ice climbing with him, but convincing my wife just got a lot harder.