The perfect bluebird conditions, just before we turned around
Yesterday was a hard day in the mountains. Not for any of the fun reasons, but because we turned around 2hrs after leaving the trailhead on what should have been a 2-day trip.
The day had all of the red lights of cognitive bias: a rare midweek 2-days off; a busy few weeks coming up; the end of the season; a booking at an often busy mountain hut; a bunch of money already spent on gear, travel and accommodation; obscenely good weather and great snow conditions. But one of us felt non-specifically ‘ill’ and, despite hoping otherwise, not-quite-right vibes didn’t go away. Faced with a night at 2,220m and no realistic way of getting back to civilisation for another 24hrs, we decided to call it and head down for the last bus back to town.
One of us could have gone on alone, but that didn’t feel right – we set out as a team, so we should bail as a team. So off we trogged down the hill, in mildly sulky, sad silence. It was definitely not the trip we’d hoped and planned for.
I know the rules: the mountains will be there another day, and this is not a good reason to become a statistic in the mountain rescue annual report. But it was still hard. Interestingly, part of my thought process was the internal sanity-check I use when building an anchor or placing gear: could I justify this to the instructors and guides I know? The answer to that one was easy: absolutely not.
So was it the right thing to do? Yes, undoubtedly? Did making the right call make it feel better? No, it was bitterly disappointing. But it was a great reminder that the right decision often doesn’t actually feel good. And that’s probably doubly worth keeping in mind in the mountains.