Food for the mountains and photos from the Tower of Babel
I wanted to put together a few of my favorite photos from the Tower of Babel because with so much media created it’s not hard to lose a lot in the shuffle of moving on to the next thing! This is a short post and by the time you’re reading it I’ll be on my way into the backcountry for another adventure in the mountains-this time the Bugaboos! Martin and I are going for a larger objective than the Tower of Babel-the Northeast Ridge of Bugaboo Spire-which is beautiful and quite a long day. It will surely test our ability to move efficiently and cover a lot of ground.
Today we are packing up and gathering food-laying plans and tactics for the coming days. It’s exciting to be returning to the Bugaboos (which I haven’t visited since Project365 in 2012) but it’s also a little nerve wracking because once you’re out there-you’re out there and it’s too late to pick up that one last item you left back at the trailer!
- My breakfasts: a few spoonfuls of my peanut butter-sunflower seed and hemp seeds concoction, along with bulletproof tea (coconut oil with tea) and some cheese.
- Snacks/Lunch: cheese and salami, Brazil nuts, jerky.
- Dinner: Boullion soup, coconut oil, greens, cheese and tuna fish.
- Glucagon, Clif bars, shot bloks and dark chocolate for emergencies/low BGs
I hope to be back out of the wilderness and reconnected by early next week with lots more photos and video to share. In the meantime, I hope some of these photos inspire you to get out and find some adventure of your own. There’s a lot out there and it belongs to us all.
Crowdfunding: a frank discussion
LivingVertical isn’t for everyone. It’s for YOU. That’s why I am asking you for the opportunity to make this mission, this message my full-time priority by pledging support for our work via our recently launched Patreon campaign. It’s loaded with exclusive rewards which you can see for yourself, including our first foray into print media-The AdventureRx Journal.
Over the past few years you’ve watched me attempt to juggle the disparate goals of supporting a family and creating revolutionary adventure media that can overthrow the limitations of type 1 diabetes.
I’ve decided to stop juggling.
I’ve committed to LivingVertical full time. That means sink or swim-a test that I’ve been able to protect LivingVertical from for years. I’ve worked many different jobs to support this effort myself and I don’t regret keeping it on life support in order to get back to this point of giving it my full time focus. Now, the question is ‘How long can I afford to maintain this commitment while supporting my family?’.
When I first began working to create empowering adventure films, blogs and photos in 2011 I had a sort of luxury of being free to live in the dirt. Literally. I took great pride in doing more with less. It felt rebellious to start taking a stand without asking for “permission” from corporate sponsors. Having basically no overhead made us hard to squash-like post apocalyptic cockroaches. I never anticipated success. When Project365 was completed there was too much momentum to just walk away from LivingVertical-but no pathway for sustaining a living from it either. I assumed that if LivingVertical was good enough some company would sweep me off my feet and give us the financial support required to ride off into the sunset creating inspiration and empowerment for the world at no cost.
I often have been told that “It would be great if (insert drug/device company name here) sponsored you! Seems like you would be a great fit. Have you ever looked into that?” I have had some great relationships with sponsors in the past-but we never rode off together into the sunset. Short term engagements left me searching for ways to attract the next short term engagements. My focus couldn’t be the work and the message. The message mattered to me and my audience-but it wasn’t what was supporting me financially.
The reason I am attempting to crowd-fund the backbone of our support is because I want to change that. I believe that my audience and the message come first. Having audience support is what allows that freedom to exist.
No one is entitled to having an audience, let alone support from that audience. The fact that you’re here with me means that I’ve been given a wonderful gift already. I have no intention of putting my work behind a wall and making it pay-to-play. I’m asking you for the opportunity to make the free, public work of LivingVertical bigger, better and more impactful.
Measuring what matters: effort over outcome
We do a lot of measuring in diabetes-but are we measuring what matters? As you may know, I’ve been on the east coast for about a week or so and I’ve been doing a little “experiment” that I’d like you to participate in. I am sharing a video each day-on my YouTube channel. It’s been a great opportunity to work on my video story telling (starting with some lighter “cat videos” to get warmed up!) as I prepare for a big climbing project this fall and it’s the pathway I am following as I push the message of empowerment and redefining the limitations of life with type 1 diabetes. I’m still sharing blogs because those are good outlets for photographs, opinion pieces and technical discussion- but the play by play of my adventures-well, that’s moving to a different stadium with more seating. I truly hope you’ll subscribe to our channel and be part of a new frontier (new for LivingVertical) that we are navigating. These forays are always way better with friends.
During my time in New York City, I had a chance to meet up with a good friend and we did an informal interview for the vlog. It got me thinking about some of the common complaints and touch-points that I’ve been noticing a lot in the community. There’s a tension between a segment of the diabetes community who think diabetes isn’t that hard-and others who think it’s basically impossible. I have been looking for years for a way to bridge that gap and inspire those who are burnt out-and borrow from the success I have had in order to equip those willing to fight on.
I know that it’s cathartic to hear leaders in our community say that it’s impossible to control our blood sugar. While I don’t disagree with this assertion, I believe it’s an incomplete message without equal priority being given to the things we can control. Effort is the focus. Effort is good or bad. Effort should absolutely be judged-because effort is one of the things we can control. Clear black and white language must apply to our self-review or else we will create loopholes to escape our responsibility.
I write this as a flawed, lazy and impatient person who spends a good deal of creative energy trying to trick my “future-self” into doing the right thing from the comfort of what will soon be the past. I’m not advocating open season on judging each other-since that process is already working out beautifully on Facebook in this harmonious political climate-but I’m saying that it’s worth holding ourselves accountable. We are not delicate snowflakes that will wilt under the duress. We will grind our teeth at times and soldier on, better off for having done so.
I would ask you to stay the hands reaching for your pitchforks and torches-because the quality of the effort is not determined by the outcome. You can do everything right and get the wrong results. I’ve seen it happen in climbing, in losing friends to their own demons, in diabetes too, of course-and the only refuge we have is knowing that our best effort was given in the fight. Sometimes that must be enough.
I’ll give a quick example. When I started LivingVertical, I got some pretty hateful comments from people who were complete outsiders. They judged my desire to use climbing to empower and inspire as being a flimsy publicity stunt that would ultimately detract from getting funding for real, meaty solutions like a “cure”. My initial reaction was to say “What the hell?! I show up trying to give people this gift and I get kicked in the teeth?” It’s true that my critics were trolls and they were completely out of line. It’s also true that encountering that judgement gave me a moment to pause and examine what I could be doing or saying to increase the clarity of my purpose. It made me that much more committed to examining my own intentions. I avoided a lot of pitfalls because I did not want to do anything to validate the trolls.
Adjust expectations and emphasis to favor the effort and let go of the outcome. Then, choose your battle and fight like hell.
Out the escape hatch
Creation is the opposite of destruction. If it were not for the destruction that type 1 diabetes threatened me with, I may never have seen the value in picking up a camera and creating something from the obstacles in my path. That’s a big part of why climbing has always appealed to me as well. It’s a process of creation, not just performance. It takes imagination and independence to solve physical problems.
You can’t photograph what you haven’t seen, a most poignant observation by one of my photographic mentors, David Duchemin- rings particularly true in a time when there are more photographs than ever. Perhaps the value is more in why we go to see these places rather than in the beauty of image alone. The meaning isn’t just aesthetic. My vision is to be able to communicate that value with fewer and fewer words to assist the images.
Photographs are like a bank account where we store feelings and experiences for rainy days or to loan to others. They are an escape hatch from the present reality-a reminder that there is more out there to see and do. These particular images are from our time in Mono Lake and Devil’s Postpile (California) as well as a few from Oregon and Washington. I look forward to opening this escape hatch wider in the future. It will be a long road to El Capitan and I expect to see many things along the way.
Life is short; we are fragile.
When friends pass we realize this reality; but it’s ever-present. We are just living in a bubble of perpetual unawareness. The numbness at this truth is temporary-it must ultimately be replaced with some feeling. Some resolution. Nothing outlives us besides what we make people feel. In some ways there is nothing more important because that is ultimately our legacy, nothing more-and nothing less. I’ve been struggling with the loss of my friend who had taken me and my family in over the last few months when we were in Las Vegas, stranded, after my car was totaled in a hit and run accident. He’d give to others to the point that it was absurd. It didn’t seem possible that someone so generous could keep nothing left in the tank to sustain the joy that he gave to everyone else.
Chris Pittman always managed to make everyone feel important. He’d take you seriously if you shared a big goal. He wasn’t the guy who’d ask ‘Yeah, but are you sure that’s a good idea?’ or ‘How are you going to get funding for that?’ He had a special appreciation for the outrageous. His habit of living with life with no half measures was comforting in an odd sort of way. He’d always manage to catch his shoe laces on a Manzanita bush while hiking along the edge of a 500 foot cliff and somehow still walk away and be able to laugh about it. His approach was like that of a child on a playground. Always ready to share what he had and be your friend with no expectation of return or benefit.
Now he’s gone and suddenly everything seems more dire. The bubble has popped-for a time at least. His levity was able to shield some of us and lift others to great heights. Still it couldn’t pull him from the sinking sands. None of us could. The last time I spoke to him he said ‘It’s good to hear from you. I haven’t really been communicating with anyone.’ He had given up his seat on the lifeboat-not to be heroic. He said he just wanted to go for a swim. None of the outstretched arms could make him stay on board.
In the last few days I’ve had this feeling where I’m going along with my day, happy and then suddenly I’ll trip over that hole that he left. While comforting me, a friend told me that this type of thing never goes away. She said, ‘You can’t try to understand it all or make it stop. You have to accept the pain and be content with holding on to the good shit. That’s how you keep from falling in that hole’.
The loss of my car in Las Vegas and the delay that had me wracked with anxiety over the last few months-gave me the chance to spend my last times with Pittman. That’s a special anchor to hold onto. I got to tell him how I loved him and that he was important to me. We talked about trying to turn his struggle with depression into an adventure project that could reach other people and shine a light into their world.
Time that I had anxiously spent waiting to get back on the road became a gift in hindsight. Sheer boredom forced me to focus on creation while I passed the time. I didn’t have anything grand or adventurous to photograph so I took pictures of my friend. Those are the last photos of him. Even with the solace of knowing that I didn’t miss opportunities with him-he’s still gone and it still hurts. Some things are out of our hands and when that realization hits, we can only hang on to the good shit, because that’s all that’s left in the end. That’s all that’s worth investing in, every day.
Pick up that camera. Take that photo. Write that email. Climb that mountain. Your legacy doesn’t belong to you. It’s not the monolithic magnum opus of the driven competitor that is too easily romanticized and too quickly forgotten. It’s not the act of ambition-but the way you make people feel along your path to the top. Those are the ashes which remain to commemorate our fire long after it has gone cold; they filter down through the sheen of our bubble-walls in which our life is guaranteed and suffering is optional.
Is full time RVing even worth it?
As we are concluding the hateful process of replacing the car and preparing to get back on the road after a MONTH of crazy pitfalls the question of “why” keeps coming up-as in ‘why are we bothering to do this?’ Is full time RVing really worth it? Is there a better way to enjoy travel and adventure-by balancing the spectacular with the mundane? These are tough questions because we knew from the beginning that there would be hard days-weeks even.These types of difficulties are the “stress-testing” of this type of lifestyle.
I don’t know what the right choice is going to be for our family in the long run. I fully intend to ride this out and make a solid year of it before considering plan “B” (pull the ripcord and bail). It’s totally possible that we just had a rough patch and will pull through it brilliantly and won’t ever want to consider quitting again. The question always comes down to quality of time spent together on adventures-which is not always congruent with quantity of time spent in pursuit of adventure! If there is anything I’ve learned from the last month it’s that being out on the road can actually slow you down and kill a lot of time when things go wrong. That’s not just inconvenient and costly, it slows down momentum of climbing and creative projects that I am working on to change the landscape of type 1 diabetes.
Like most difficult decisions I believe the answer will be some form of compromise-choosing the downside that allows for the greatest upside. The option for no downside at all doesn’t seem to exist. Accepting the realization that a sacrifice must be made under the best circumstances is the best way to make deliberate decisions rather than being victimized by mishaps. This is a major part of my view on life with type 1 diabetes. The time we have is an investment and death and discomfort will come to us all sooner or later no matter our choices or station in life. It’s better to figure out what is worth suffering for than trying not to suffer.
Yes I quit drinking coffee. Here's why...
I recently announced on Facebook my decision to quit drinking coffee. This declaration was met with some disbelief and horror given my erstwhile penchant for drinking coffee. I’m still a little bit surprised at how personally people take it when you announce that you’re choosing to do something differently with your diet. I promise, I didn’t quit coffee in order to disrupt social conventions and that there is a legitimate reason for my choice. That reason is a combination of two factors: type 1 diabetes and El Capitan in Yosemite.
I failed on El Capitan in 2012 during Project365 and I vowed to return, but conveniently avoided doing so for a number of reasons that all seemed legitimate at one time or another. No one wants to fail and it’s even less appealing when people are watching. It’s also a lot more difficult being marooned on a tiny island in a vertical sea of granite for days at a time when you know that your body could revolt against you at any point, potentially with dire consequences. It’s incredibly committing to feel medically vulnerable in a position that is so isolated.
Fear. It either becomes the reason to DO or to NOT DO.
Once I chose to let fear into the decision making process, I stopped making forward progress. Everything devolved into a circular holding pattern. It’s totally reasonable to be afraid of having a low blood sugar on the wall. It’s fine to be afraid of getting dehydrated and cramping up, or hauling too much extra or not enough extra. It’s not ok to let that fear paralyze you.
Fear is a useful ally if it’s not allowed to dominate the conversation. For that reason I am training. Preparing. Working out ways to mitigate situations that I am afraid of. That’s what the next several months will entail-and here is where the decision to quit coffee comes in. I have found that one of the biggest factors that hindered me on past bigwall climbs has been dehydration which leads to cramping. Dehydration has also gone hand in hand with my most erratic blood sugar swings-which is anecdotal, but it is a pattern that I’ve noticed.
It’s also worth noting that low carb diets definitely leave you more vulnerable to dehydration if you don’t take consistent and fairly aggressive action to mitigate the diuretic effects of carb restriction. This is definitely one of the downsides that significantly offsets the blood sugar stability and energy that I have enjoyed in the last year of following a ketogenic diet. There’s always a catch! It’s not a deal breaker for me-it’s a trade off. Coffee is part of what I’m choosing to sacrifice in order to be able to climb further and harder-and hopefully it will make it easier for me to stay adequately hydrated.
I will follow up on this in upcoming blogs because I am genuinely curious to see if this change will impact the way that I feel and my blood sugar as I am training. I have to say that so far I don’t miss the jittery nerves, anxiety and insulin resistance I used to experience every morning with my coffee.
I'm back, and I'm sorry.
In the past few months I have been circling the wagons and getting the website rebuilt with the aid of Splitter Designs. I was confronted with the disparity between what I wanted to create and the reality of what I have been producing . The last few years have felt pretty unfulfilling-hollow, as though something has been missing from my work. I looked back at the posts and pictures and kept thinking ‘Is this the vision? Is this the best you have to give? Where is the passion, the fire and the cutting edge?’
One of the things that has been skewing my vision over the last few years is a desire to be perceived as successful in order to attract sponsors. How else does and athlete/speaker/artist feed make a living? No one wants to sponsor failure. I needed to make a living doing what I do-creating adventure media that inspires people through my struggle with type 1 diabetes. As that reality grew, it stole my fire-my joy. I stopped speaking to the people who were supporting me and I moved on to the people who didn’t care, who needed to be convinced of the value of the LivingVertical mission. I wanted to convert new followers more than caring for my existing ones. By simply reaching more people, I hoped that I could develop LivingVertical into a quazi-Team NovoNordisk, replete with corporate support and hundreds of thousands of followers-and a salary that could support my work and my family.
What I have found reflecting on all of this is that there is no shame in failure if you choose carefully the hill on which you are prepared to die. There is no honor in measuring success in terms of mass appeal or financial gains. I am returning to LivingVertical-full time until I cannot sustain it further. I have returned to the reason I started blogging and filming in 2011-to shake things up. To challenge the perception of chronic illness as weakness and to inspire interaction with the natural world around us a the means to win the battle for our minds. I don’t think my work will ever be a “good fit” with selling drugs or devices. I am fine with that. I’m done measuring success based on distracting people who don’t care. This may be the hill on which LivingVertical goes to die and while it may never be trending on Twitter, it will be honorable and true to the vision that inspired its origin.
I am thankful to have every one of you here-because you do care (or you wouldn’t have read this far!)-and you are the audience that I should have been serving all along. I am sorry for failing to see that over the last few years. I am lucky to have finally put my finger on what was missing in LivingVertical. Now let’s go rattle some cages and challenge the conventional wisdom, the marketing drivel and the stereotypes. There’s still work to be done around here.
Hiking Observation Point in Zion
I’ve been meaning to hike Observation Point in Zion for several years-but it was only this week that I followed through when we were visited by a fellow type 1 climber, Andres and his friends from San Diego. They were visiting us in Utah for spring break and were looking to get some spectacular views of Zion National Park along with some hiking-and we initially thought of doing Angels Landing but opted against it because it’s insanely crowded and honestly, it’s far from the best view of the park.
1000 feet of climbing before lunch! (video)
Red Rock Nevada was a great stop on our journey-because where else can you knock off 1000 feet of climbing before lunch on just about any given day? This was a short stop for us-three days or so-but that was enough for me to start off fighting a low blood sugar on the first day of climbing and dialing in my insulin and diet to match my energy output. By day 3 I felt like I hit a great stride and this really has improved my confidence about what I can do, despite having to deal with diabetes.
Stay tuned for more videos coming up about my journey with diet and tips about adapting type 1 diabetes to being more active. Being empowered to push our limits is an incredible tool to take back our health and the more I can do to encourage and facilitate that, the better!
If you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel as we keep on the move!
Ok. So here’s where I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever felt like some good has come from a challenging moment with your diabetes? Drop a comment and let’s chat!
Or if you’d rather discuss in private: [email protected]
