It’s almost 4am and I’m crying in a rocking chair, trying to get my 2-month-old boy to go to sleep. Yesterday, Guy Lacelle died in an avalanche in Hyalite Canyon. For some reason it’s sadder when I hold a baby.

Most people know that Guy was a great ice climber. That’s not news, although it probably makes his death more newsworthy to the layman’s press. His climbing was impressive, but there are many other things that made him Guy. These are the things that I’ll remember.

Guy had dogs. Lots of them. It probably qualified as a pack. You could tell that his dogs saw him as one of them, the alpha. With the older ones, he didn’t have to call their names or chase after them. They did what he wanted and the communication was silent. And when one of them died, it hurt him.

Guy had a temper. He was a great climber but even he got frustrated at times. He kept his temper under wraps, but if let loose, an impressive stream of French Canadian profanity came forth.

Guy had a big smile. I looked forward to seeing him in the winter in Canmore. Recently I was thinking I should touch base and see when Guy’s coming back to town. But I didn’t and I regret that.

Guy was competitive. He was 54 when he died, but he’s been in competitions against people half his age for the last decade, maybe longer. I think he liked it too when — if we went ice climbing with him — the younger climbers would insist on bringing the screws. (Guy did most of his ice climbing by himself, so he was comfortable with few or no ice screws.)

Guy was incredibly motivated. Even in his fifties, he would often climb nine or ten days in a row and then only take one rest day. Like many of my friends, I’m in my mid-thirties and I haven’t done that in ten years.

Guy was open-minded. As climbing changed, he didn’t resist it or hang on to the past. He was excited about every new development and what he could learn from it. It was great to see, and I really respected his approach.

Guy had crazy hair. He was balding on top and he let the rest grow long. It gave him a crazy, classic bushman look. I don’t think he was aware of it, but it was part of his charm.

If you climb long enough, the death of people you know is guaranteed. For me, other deaths have been sad, but Guy’s death was the first to make me angry. He had taken more risks than most of us and come out unscathed until now. I would have preferred to think that he had earned some kind of free pass. I would have preferred he remain invincible.

If it had to happen, then I’m glad it was something out of his control. Guy prided himself on knowing his margin of safety; he only thought a solo was successful if he was in 100% control at all times. If his accident had come from a popped tool or a sheared crampon, that only would have pissed him off. And as one of the world’s most accomplished soloists, dying because he slipped would only be sensationalist fodder for the always-ill-informed media.

The last time I asked him, he had logged over 5,000 pitches of ice since he started ice climbing, most of them without a rope. He kept track of every pitch since he started. I like the idea that that climbing record can stay perfect and intact.

The baby boy in my lap is asleep now; that deep, drooling baby sleep. The 6-year-old is asleep in the next room. If the boys become climbers, they will see Guy’s name in alpine journals and guidebooks, and I hope they hear the stories of his achievements. I will be proud to tell my sons that I knew him.

Guy, you will be missed.

091215 Update
A few links to news and info about Guy and the accident:
* News coverage of the accident
* Doug Chabot’s video explanation of the avalanche
* “Adieu, Guy” from Petzl with friends’ comments
* An interview with Guy on Alpinist.com from July 2008
* A video of Guy tree-planting, summer of 2009

“For me, [my legacy] will be the trees. I’m getting close to plant a million trees.”
~ Guy Lacelle, summer of 2009

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On October 30th, I presented “Is Sponsorship a Sin?” at the annual Night of Lies in Canmore. It’s a fun evening of heckling, mockery & ridicule. Given the nature of the event (& the typical amount of beer consumed), I thought examining professional climbing would be a good fit. I’ve included a video of my talk below.

I sent this video to a few friends that weren’t there, and my friend Dave Karl, a sales rep in the northeast US, raised a good point:

Good slide show but I disagree with the three-test rule. I have IFMGA & AMGA Mountain Guides that I sponsor that are totally worthy. Their personal (non-guided) climbing accomplishments may not be noteworthy among their elite peers, but they don’t bullshit either, and they do help sell product. These guides help the entire sport and climbing community by educating the public and introducing new participants to climbing. A good mountain guide can be a great sponsorship investment.

This is a good point, and one I wish I had made during my talk. I agree with Dave that there are folks out there worthy of support that may not be on the cutting edge of climbing. They are typically local, grassroots climbers or industry-folk like guides that are in front of the target market on a daily basis. I have no objections to these athletes being supported, either by sales reps or by brands, on an informal basis.

My beef is with climbers that are put on an official, publicized pedestal by the sponsoring brand (and with climbers that are striving to be put on that pedestal) — via blogs, websites, magazines, slideshows, etc — but who really haven’t done anything of note to warrant their elevated status.

This latter group seems to be growing in numbers, and that trend needs to be reversed.

Enjoy the show…

Sponsorship Slideshow from Scott Semple on Vimeo.

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“Self-promotion is bad.”

No, bullshit is bad. Self-promotion happens everywhere and it’s smart. We just don’t like it mixed with our idealistic pursuits, of which climbing is one.

“Sponsorship is selling out.”

Only if the person has previously committed to not being sponsored. Otherwise, it’s just psychological projection on the part of the critic.

“Sponsored climbers are pressured by brands to perform.”

I don’t believe it happens. If there’s any pressure, it’s self-inflicted by the athlete. I was sponsored for five years, and the only pressure I felt was what I put on myself.

“Sponsored climbers get paid.”

I wish. Sharma and Hirayama maybe. Some retainers are paid, but they are very rarely enough to live on. (Unless you live in your car, don’t put gas in it and eat dog food.)

“If I’m rad enough, they’ll just call me up and give me free gear.”

Sorry, this ain’t the NBA, sugar. If you want it, you have to go after it.

“Sponsorship has no influence on me.”

Only in a blind taste test.

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On October 30th, I presented a slideshow version of this post at the annual Night of Lies in Canmore. Feel free to check out the video.

Is sponsorship a sin? NO. But bullshit is.

After nearly 15 years of climbing, I rarely read climbing magazines. I have no subscriptions. If I do pick up a magazine, I usually only look at the pictures. The words usually make me nauseous.

My experienced climber friends are the same way. Some of them haven’t looked at a climbing magazine in years.

The more you climb, the less you’re interested in reading the same recycled stories with the same characters smiling from new faces. And the less you can tolerate the self-promotion that comes from white lies and self-serving exaggerations in hopes of becoming (or staying) sponsored. And those indulgences are rampant and widespread.

If sponsorship isn’t backed up by a legitimate accomplishment that is significant to the sport, then being rewarded for something insignificant is sad and undeserved. And it’s immoral, because it creates a facade, and facades are lies.

This happens more often than you might think. Many of the athletes you often see in climbing magazines are phenomenal at self-promotion, but range from average to crap at actually climbing. Ice, mixed and alpine climbing have the worst offenders. (Rock climbing is usually too consistent, popular and objective for lies to last long.) Truth is, many climbers are sponsored for what they say, or how well they’re known, rather than for what they’ve done.

The problem stems from the fact that the “athlete” is the performer, but also the judge and the journalist. A lack of objectivity and a lack of integrity combine to create opportunistic self-promotion masquerading as journalism. The result is that average achievements beget above-average attention. (All those “Hot Flashes” you read, written in the third person, are often written by the climbers themselves.) Few other disciplines would tolerate such a lack of objectivity, but no direct access to the “feats” of accomplishment makes us dependant on it.

Sponsorship is only defensible when the degree of self-promotion is equal to or less than the significance of the achievement. When Good Climber does something Rad and says, “This is Rad”, that’s fine. Kudos. Too often though, Wanna Be Famous does something mediocre and says, “This is Rad! Really! I swear!”

The sad fact about our sport is that genuine devotees are the exception, not the rule. True athletes, masters and visionaries do exist, but only some of them are sponsored. Most are not.

Disclosure: Yes, I was a sponsored climber. I resigned from all of my sponsorships in December 2007. I am happy I did.

UPDATE, October 22nd: After some dialog with editors of some of the climbing magazines, I see now that the first few paragraphs of this post may seem critical of the magazines. That is not what I intended. My beef is not with the magazines, but with opportunistic climbers of questionable integrity and the brands that support them. It’s not the magazines’ responsibility to police our sport. It’s my hope that the climbers themselves will do that, and then the brands will follow suit.

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“Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness… There is magic in misery.”
— Dean Karnazes, ultramarathon runner, completed 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days

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If there were only one thing that were crucial to success, I think it would be this: the devout acceptance that everything sucks. You cannot escape The Suck Factor.

Whether you’re a professional athlete, actor, writer, banker, lawyer, teacher, photographer, guide, trucker, you can be guaranteed of two things: 1) You will always have days that suck; and 2) The sucking is a test — a threshold guardian — that, if passed, will deliver you to a higher state of functioning. Of course, if you quit, well, then the Suck Factor won.

I’ve had several discussions lately along the lines of, “I’m really not psyched with where I am right now. What do you think?” While wanting something better is always worthwhile and a great driver of continuous improvement, I don’t think true progress can happen over the long-term without the happy resignation that nothing is perfect and it takes a f&^% load of work to make it fantastic.

When I was between 18 and 25, I think I was a pretty normal person, searching for “the perfect [insert noun here].” However, now 34, I’ve accepted that pretty much anything can be made fantastic so long as I accept the Suck Factor.

Sure, the Suck Factor of working in a coal mine in Siberia is pretty high. So would being famous enough to make the cover of People, not to mention gun-in-the-mouth embarrassing. The Suck Factor of being a novelist with ten bestsellers, I guess, would be pretty low, but that fantasy ignores the truck load of work it took to write the first two. The trick is to either find something with a tolerable Suck Factor, or to accept a higher Suck Factor now, for a lower one later. Most importantly, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking the Suck Factor can be escaped.

Toward that end, I think there are four important ideas that can help:

1. Be Prepared to Endure. Positions in life with apparently low Suck Factors will be in high demand. That means competition will be fierce. Thus, the initial Suck Factor will be HIGHER than average — writing and sweating and crying before any of those books become bestsellers, for example. “You are NOT a beautiful and unique snowflake,” so accept the fact that you’re going to have to work your ass off.
2. Momentum is Your Greatest Ally. Need to make a change? Do NOT hit the brakes and start pedaling in the opposite direction. That wastes all of the potential energy you had while heading the wrong way. Instead, pedal harder and SPEED UP. Wait for the exit, and then accelerate into it. 
3. Ideas are Nothing Without Execution. Just like hitting the brakes kills momentum, waiting for direction before pedaling only leaves you camped at the intersection while other cyclists yell at you for blocking traffic. START PEDALING. The direction, at first, is irrelevant.
4. Don’t Trust the Psych. Passion is for beginners; inspiration is for amateurs. Kill the fantasy. Fairy tales are for kids. That initial excitement is from novelty, not this-is-for-me truth. Passion is feverish and free; love is calm and hard-earned.

It takes, on average, almost ten years of hard beatings to get your black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu. That is a rather high Suck Factor in my opinion. But can you imagine the joy of learning and knowing something so intimately? Do BJJ students, intent on their black belt, run and skip onto the mat every day? I think not. The Suck Factor is part of the deal.

A real black belt in anything will be just as difficult. If it’s worthwhile, it’ll be the hardest thing you ever do. The Suck Factor will loom, perhaps daily. Accept it.

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…is thinking that principles of success are pursuit-specifc.

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“In the physical education department at the university some academics wanted to find out what was behind [Gullich's finger training]. They called in some rock athletes, had them hang on flat holds right on their fingertips and loaded them down with more and more weights. One after the other let go and fell off. Only Wolfgang kept hanging on the board. The professors dragged out more weights but at 175 kilos they broke off the test. They had no more weights to add.”

— from A Life in the Vertical the biography of Wolfgang Gullich

METRIC CONVERSION August 20th: 175 kilos is equivalent to 385 pounds…

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“Wolfgang was a genius, able to realize all his potential at decisive moments, to summon up all his mental and physical energies when they were needed… His achievements cannot be attributed to a unique natural talent, something that most people assume about him. Rather, his abilities were the result of incredible exertion.”

— Tillman Hepp, describing Wolfgang Gullich in A Life in the Vertical. Gullich was a cutting edge sport climber, repeatedly re-defining the sport throughout his career, including the first ascent of Action Directe (14d) in 1991.

More info:
The Talent Myth, Part I 

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In other words, have you ever choked on your own foot? Or visually inspected the inside of your own ass?

This past week, I’ve been introduced to three such brilliant contributors to mankind, two in person, the third online.

The first two were at Lake Louise on the weekend, fresh off their hard core, painfully slow ascents of trade routes in the Bugs, and showin’ the rest of us punters how their bad asses roll. While surrounded by two Rockies alpine first ascentionists and three 5.13 sport climbers, they passively aggressively espoused their crack climbing radness with asinine comments like, “But those aren’t cracks [at the Amphitheatre]. Come on.”

And then they sent Pub Night (5.6) while only putting in 15 pieces of gear. What made it even more hard core was that they were fat.

In between over-racking for easy climbs, comments similar to the following were made:

• “Never sport climbed, never toproped” said smugly. Trust me, Einstein, we could tell.
• “Sonnie… Timmy… Marc”, referring to good climbers, clumsily implying camaraderie, while they’ve likely only drooled on their shoes after slideshows.

I was introduced to the third social contortionist in an online forum. While engaged in a forum-exchange with Raphael Slawinski, the third hardcore moron said, “In my vast experience with nasty rock…” and “My tolerance for objective risk always seems to be a bit more than any of my Canadian partners over the past 7 years……..I can’t think of any of my hardened desert tower friends…”

I was a beginner too. It’s an important phase.

But PLEASE. If you are still working through the rubber on your first pair of rock shoes… or if you find that some of your rad trad cams still have paint on them… or if you’re just back from your first multi-pitch camping trip… do not delude yourself into thinking sending 5.6 gear at a sport crag — or backing off a huge flake that most climb past — makes you cool.

“‘Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Would you like a little gravy with that ankle?

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