Death of a lie

I was supposed to be climbing with Rich Simpson this winter—probably something on the Grandes Jorasses. Not that we'd ever met; our relationship was no more than half a dozen Facebook emails knocked back and forth. Still, I was looking forward to it. I know little about sport climbing or bouldering, but I'd heard a lot about Rich from other climbers I respected. Having heard through the grapevine that he was planning to move into alpine climbing, I thought I'd see if he was up for a trip.

It seemed Rich was perhaps cut from a different cloth than your average sport climber, and my interest was piqued when I heard he'd given up climbing and taken up boxing—a great story, even if it didn't turn out to be true. I'd also heard tales of four-minute miles and the rest, but I never had any reason to question if he could pull off such things. It seemed that if you could climb as hard as he did, then such feats were entirely possible (I expect Roger Bannister never climbed as hard as Rich Simpson).

Anyway, we didn't make it to the Alps. It turned out that many people started questioning some of Rich’s claims, and rather than defend himself, he dropped off the radar. This left those who accused him feeling vindicated, and after Rich unfriended me on Facebook, I couldn't get in touch with him anymore.

This blog isn't about Rich, but the affair—one increasingly common in climbing—got me thinking about these issues.

I've been climbing for a long time and have met a lot of climbers. Every now and again, you spot someone who displays signs of real mental illness. Mental illness doesn't have to be a bad thing; I expect a large portion of human exploration and endeavor, not to mention commerce and politics, has been undertaken very effectively by people suffering from some form of malady. Many who fail on wild schemes are labeled madmen or lunatics, but those who succeed are hailed as heroes or geniuses.

One form of mental illness that plays a large part in climbing and all adventure sports—especially dangerous ones—is labeled by psychiatry as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a complex mix of personality issues centered on personal identity and rejection. Unhappy with who they are, people with BPD attempt to create an idealized perfect self in order to be accepted. They are much more likely to be impulsive and undertake dangerous activities, and they face a higher risk of suicide, often triggered by rejection.

Heavy stuff, but I wonder if this desire to build a perfect self leads some people close to achieving that ambition—putting in effort no normal person would, building a perfect body for a sport where they can reap the love of the masses. Could BPD be at the heart of many competitive sports? After all, it seems to me that the normally fit, normally psyched, normally interested people are the most balanced. Meanwhile, the climber who trains five hours a day, eats toilet roll to stay thin, goes to the gym when they can barely walk, and sets aside work, relationships, and money for climbing is far from normal—even if they are idealized by 'normal' climbers. The same is probably true for a great many athletes: it is this mental departure from the norm that drives them.

I wonder, then, if lying is part of this, as lying offers a shortcut to the love and acceptance these people crave. They may also believe that something they know they could do is as good as done, and so they say it is done. Each lie builds their confidence, which is merely a mirror of what others believe about them.

I've met quite a few people like this. Most would label them bullshitters, but their problem is far more severe—it's pathological. They believe the lie so thoroughly that they are blind to its improbability. The most dangerous among them are those who could actually pull it off: their body and skill forged by this search for perfection to the point that they are nearly flawless. Most of us set out on the path to greatness, but just a few steps along, decide we are good enough and that going further isn't worth the effort. But for those with BPD, that path stretches on forever.

We all lie—sometimes by accident or omission, other times to save face. Like when I ask a student if they know how to tie in, and they say "yes" when they can't. I lie, too. Last winter, I went up to solo Doctor's Choice in Coire an t-Sneachda, but when I reached the crux, I had second thoughts—mainly because I was the only person in the corrie (it was 7 AM). I climbed down and soloed all the easy gullies instead. Later, as I walked down to my sack, I bumped into Alan Fyfe and his partner gearing up. I know Alan, and when he asked what I'd been up to, I said, "I've been soloing around, and I went up Doctor's Choice." Alan replied, "Oh, we're going to do that! What's it like?"

In an instant, I realized I’d made it sound as though I'd soloed the entire route. Instead of setting the record straight, I just said, "It's OK," and left it at that. What must Alan have thought, climbing in my footsteps through the snow, only to find they stopped at the crux? And what if I'd lied about other things?

I often think about Tomo Česen and his shattered accomplishments, each collapsing onto the last, from the Himalayas to the Alps, bit by bit destroying the man. What he claimed to have done was impossible, yet we wanted it to be true—only to feel equal satisfaction when it was proven false, as the boundaries of the possible were restored. Still, the question bugs me: if a man can solo 8a, couldn't he have done all he claimed and simply given us the finger for our disbelief? Maybe climbing didn't deserve Tomo.

What allows such people to carry on is that we rarely challenge them. It is only in these modern days of online forums that these matters come to light. While forum debates feed our baser desires for gossip and humiliation, they are exceedingly dangerous—people have taken their own lives for less.

So what do you do when you suspect this is happening? It's a tough question, but I think UKC showed great restraint in the matter. Climbers need to grasp the trauma they can inflict with flippant comments. Some things are bigger than climbing.

The whole affair reminded me of a conversation I had with a climber who claimed Steve Bancroft had lied about making the first ascent of Narcissus at Froggatt (E6). He said his dad had been there on the day Steve claimed to have done it, but had only seen him top-rope it. Being a young, impressionable climber, I passed this story along whenever Bancroft's name came up.

It was only years later that I was called out on it. I was in a car with Bernard Newman, talking about that golden age of climbing and its characters, when I retold the story.

"Rubbish," Bernard said. "I know he bloody did."

"How?" I asked, feeling a bit sheepish.

"Because I bloody belayed him!"

And just like that, a lie about a lie died.