“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” – Marie Curie
Clear Creek Canyon – David Goodman is scared. He should be.
He’s staring at raging whitewater tumbling through a constricted gorge and mapping a line he plans to follow in his kayak. He knows he must hit every stroke and stay on that line. He has to avoid a foaming hole that will keep him underwater. The name of the rapid on Clear Creek, Rigor Mortis, hardly inspires confidence.
Goodman’s brain is firing neurochemicals, his body flushing with adrenaline. He’s breathing pretty hard. His heart is racing. He’s agitated and nervous. His muscles are tense. After a few minutes, he turns his gaze away from the Class V rapids and walks to his kayak at the top of the rapid. Stare too long, and the mind will wander to places where confidence crumbles.
“It’s time. Let’s do it,” Goodman says, but only half his paddling posse has decided to run Rigor.
Securing his craft’s skirt over the kayak’s cockpit, he takes some deep breaths and shoves into the maelstrom. He tips over on a tricky entrance wave, but deftly rights himself and paddles through the meat of the rapids. He yelps in celebration.
Mentally, he scolds himself for getting so worked up as he stared at the churning water, a condition known as “paralysis by analysis.”
“I don’t really see it as conquering fear. It’s more like using it. Rolling with it,” says the longtime paddler and owner of Mountain Miser gear shop in Englewood. “Adrenaline is like spice. Some people like it really spicy. Some like it a little milder.”
Playing in Colorado’s mountains offers a taste of everything on the spice rack. From Class VI haba- ñero-pepper kayaking and climbing to Anaheim-pepper hiking and floating, carousing Colorado’s terrain and waters is a perpetual lesson in addressing fear.
Fear is the same for the hard-core athletes and the recreational roustabouts. How one reacts to fear is where distinctions are made and lines are drawn.
Your body’s natural responses to the obvious threats of climbing an exposed mountain or paddling a raging river or hitting 40 mph on rocky single-track are anxiety, apprehension, agitation and even dread. Success – often defined as skiing, paddling, riding, climbing another day – often depends on how a person addresses fear.
“The concept of fear in terms of athletic performance is certainly near the top of the what holds people back from achieving great things,” says Michael Riggs, who uses his master’s degree in sports psychology to help athletes and business leaders reach peak performance.
From his consulting firm in Windsor, Riggs’ strategy is to get his clients to recognize their fear as a mental reaction and identify what exactly they are afraid of. Oftentimes, he says, fear is based on a memory of past failures. He works with his clients to develop the ability to erase that memory.
“I think some of it is just personality-based,” Riggs says. “I think some people by personality are just more timid and some people thrive on risk. They need that sense of fear that makes them feel alive.”
The true thrill seekers are addicted to the rush of adrenaline. They pursue fear. But it’s not a paralyzing or doubting fear. It’s a comfortable, heart- pumping liveliness they convert into moments of clarity and intense focus. They dance around the dreaded, fear-induced “choke,” knowing if they fall into the grip of a panic attack, they could perish. In the midst of chaos, they make instinctual decisions that are life or death.
They are not thinking about the past or the future, but are riveted in the present. There is no room for fear in the present – after all, you are only scared of something in the past or future. It is in that Zen-like moment – the so-called “zone” – that today’s top mountain athletes conquer fear and accomplish the staggering. The reward is increased by teasing and besting the fear that stops regular (sane?) weekend warriors cold.
California skier and BASE jumper Shane McConkey has spent a lifetime chasing those moments and rewards. He found them first on a 10-foot cliff as a little ripper skiing at Squaw Valley in California. Now, he finds it skiing off the Eiger in Switzerland and leaping from tall buildings wearing a small parachute on his back.
“I have always made a point of looking as deeply into the things that scare me as I can,” McConkey said. “I knew that if I thought enough about it and figured out why and how the situation scared me, then I could find a way to accept it and then beat it.
“If you shy away from everything, you’re afraid you’ll never learn anything. You’ll end up an ignorant sissy. Taking that calculated risk, a risk that I believe is manageable and then sticking … it is one of the greatest feelings one can have. Getting scared is what makes it kinda fun.”
David Billings jumps out of airplanes with people strapped to his chest. As a certified tandem sky diving instructor at Mile-Hi Skydiving in Longmont, he gets pretty close to people when they are probably their most scared. Out of 1,500 tandem jumps, he only has had one person who adamantly refused to jump. He was a big guy, a former Marine, Billings says.
“He said, ‘No way am I jumping out of this plane,”‘ Billings says. “So I told him, ‘You want to get down there and face all your friends after they jumped and you didn’t?’ He said: ‘You’re right. You have to push me out of the plane.’ I did. He had fun.”
Peer pressure, or a camera – a.k.a. Kodak Courage – can force folks to swallow their fear.
There are other tactics that work. Deep breathing. Envisioning total success. Telling yourself you are able. Re-evaluating to make sure all options are weighed.
Aron Ralston has an intimate history with fear. Two years ago, the Aspen mountaineer was forced to cut off his right forearm with a dull blade after he was pinned in a remote Utah canyon for six days with enough food for a day. Today, Ralston is on a mountaineering career track that will ultimately eclipse the die-or-amputate decision that made him first famous.
“I try to convert fear into action,” says Ralston, who last winter became the first person to solo climb all of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks in winter. “Feeling afraid is an emotional response to a situation, and once you recognize that you can stop yourself. The question I like to ask myself is, ‘What am I not seeing?’ Take action to move through fear.”
Top-tier athletes share varied opinions on how to address fear. There is no unified theory on what works when facing the fearful choke.
Tao Berman, the Washington state kayaker who holds several world records for paddling over 100-foot waterfalls, says he hasn’t felt fear in years.
“I am confident in my ability to pull off anything I’m about to attempt,” the 26-year-old says. “Fear comes from doubt, and when you have 100 percent confidence in yourself there’s no room for fear. That can make a lot of what I do more dangerous, because I don’t have that emotion of fear to push me away from something.
“I have lost that self-preservation skill, so I have to rely on my judgment. That’s why I’ll back off something: good judgment, not fear.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
