End of Season at Seneca

Bonfire

The stars
over my head as I breathe in
peace.

What Sustains a Leader When All is Going Wrong?

With the death of Dr. Amy Stine on October 11, 2008, came the realization that one of us died climbing at Seneca Rocks. This realization is so different from book knowledge, or hearing about another deadly season at Mt. Everest on the news. It is knowledge gained through a lived experience. It's the difference between knowing on the surface, and knowing deep down. It is about how I now feel about leading after I have experienced its consequences through the death of someone I knew.

Last Saturday, a mere week after Amy's death, I returned to Seneca Rocks. I had signed up earlier in the term to lead a team of Pitt undergraduate students from the Pitt Outdoors Club. It was a very difficult experience, because everyone knew about Amy and was anxious, and because a lot went wrong on our climb. Joey, Thalia, Toni, and I, took ten hours and fifteen minutes “door-to-door” to climb “Young Ladies”. And although I learned a lot from this climb, I paid a high price for this new knowledge. I am grateful that we made it down the mountain safely and that all of us were in good spirits at the end of the day. The bonfire at the end-of-season celebration was spectacular under the Milky Way, and the company was vibrant.

Leadership becomes different once death is involved. My teachers Donna, Indy, and Bob, have had experiences of falling, injury, and death, on multi-pitch, trad climbs. They grappled with these difficult issues before me, and they shared their thoughts and feelings with me while I struggled these past weeks with my own thoughts about my short- and long-term future as a lead climber. In the wake of Amy's death, they helped me to return to trad leading. But on my first day out, so much went wrong. Will this experience dishearten me?

What sustains a leader when all is going wrong?

Leadership comes with responsibility. To paraphrase the U.S. Army: The leader is responsible for everything the team does or fails to do.

Sometimes the mountain allows us to see what we already knew with greater clarity. What sustains me as a leader when all goes wrong, is my passion to discharge my leadership responsibility to the best of my ability, and my compassion for the people on my team.

I once backed off from a leadership position when the responsibility for the people in my care became too much for me to bear. Yet as leaders in our professional environments, we are merely responsible for our subordinate's careers or livelihoods. Even that can be a heavy burden.

Leadership on the rocks feels much harder to me now than leading in my other arenas, science and academia. Leadership on the rocks can be the difference between life and death.

PS.

Last week, after the outing with POC, Dr. Peggy Heely, with whom I co-teach the Senior Leadership Seminar at Pitt, asked me to come up with a make-up assignment for students who missed a portion of seminar when the class interviews visiting leaders. After each of our leadership interviews, students are assigned to write a reflective paper to connect one question & answer from the interview to a leadership theory which we read and discussed in class as well as to a personal experience; and they must write about how their new insights from theory and experience will shape their own future as leaders. The internet is a rich resource – and I found that

Sir Chris Bonington has this to say on “What sustains a leader when all is going wrong?”

The Death of Dr. Amy Stine

On October 11, 2008, my fellow Pittsburgh climber Dr. Amy Stine fell to her death while trad leading Streptococcus (rated 5.9 G) on the North Peak East Face of Seneca Rocks, WV.

The day Amy died was a beautiful fall day. She died doing what she loved, climbing, and she died from her fall instantly.

I had met Amy and her husband Bill, who belayed her on her last climb, through the sport we love. Amy was a joyful climber; and she climbed with much grace. Amy had Bill, who shared her love for climbing. Amy and Bill were out climbing together on many weekends. I remember vividly the pleasure of Bill and Amy's company around the camp fire at Princess Snowbird, where we tell the stories of our rock adventures.

It is almost two weeks later now, and still I struggle with my thoughts and feelings about the accident. Amy was the first climber I personally knew to perish on a climb. While knowing that trad leading has inherent dangers of injury and death, it is quite different experiencing the death of a fellow climber.

Climbing has risks, owing to environmental circumstance as well as human error, but l am quite aware of that at all times. I accept that risk. I manage that risk together with my climbing partners. I feel so alive when my body moves over the rock, when my mind is completely in the very moment, my motions are one with my mind.

When an accident happens, the ones close to us who do not climb raise their voices in concern. Why do you have to do this? Why do you climb?

My dad, an Olympic hopeful in rowing, understands and once articulated so well why I climb. He calls it the Koerpergefuehl, which the web tells me translates to coenesthesia. “Coenesthesia (according to dictionary.com) -- the aggregate of impressions arising from organic sensations that forms the basis of one's awareness of body or bodily state, as the feeling of health, vigor, or lethargy.” I climb because I love the bodily feeling of moving up on rock. But there is more. I love that climbing is complicated enough to completely absorb my thoughts and focus them in the moment and on task; because facing death helps me decide to continue to live. Once, while climbing, I experienced flow. This is something I have only felt climbing.

One of us was taken by the rock. What lessons have I learned from Amy's death?

To lead first and foremost requires that we lead ourselves.

The following options lay before me after Amy's death.
I could discontinue trad leading.
I could discontinue trad climbing.
I could stop to lead.
I could stop to climb.
Last Saturday I went back to Seneca to lead students from the University of Pittsburgh Outdoors Club. It was a very difficult experience. But I found that I had decided.

Knowing that I will continue to trad lead, the leadership questions in front of me now and for the future are different ones. How will I do even better to ensure the safety for all members of my team? How will I continue to bring to the outside the joy I feel on the inside when I climb? How will I do so in spite of all I know, and how will I share both, my knowledge and my joy, with others?

Lessons Learned from Amy:

Climb for life.
Climb for the love of it.
Climb with people you love, and people you want to come to love.
Climb to better understand yourself and others.
Climb safely.
Climb with joy.

Amy's death was sudden. I chose the lyrics below as my death poem for her.

does anybody really know the secret
or the combination for this life
and where they keep it
its kinda sad when u dont know the meanin
but everything happens for a reason (everything happens for a reason)
i dont even know what i should say
cause im an idiot
a loser, microphone abuser
i analyze every second i exist
beatin on my mind every second with my fists

and everybody wanna run (wanna run)
everybody wanna hide from the gun (hide from the gun)
you can take a ride through this life if you want
but you cant take the edge off the knife (no sir)
and now you want your money back (money back)
but your denied cause your brains fried from the sack
and there aint nothin i can do

cause life is a lesson
you learn it when your through

(Excerpt from Limp Bizkit – Take A Look Around. )