Conquering My Fear of Heights

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       What triggered my extreme fear of heights? I’m not sure I can answer that question. I started jolting awake in the middle of the night when I was a little boy. Two particular nightmares frequently doused me in sweat. One frightful fabrication precariously seesawed my school bus on the edge of a bridge, the swift river far below. In the other nightmare, I dangled thousands of feet in the air from an open airplane door. In reality, it didn’t scare me when our school bus crossed that bridge, and I had never flown in an airplane before, so I have no idea why these ghastly buzzards continually picked at my slumber.  

       It’s ironic, though, that I was the only one out of all the neighborhood boys who would jump out of the hayloft at Keith’s place. I plummeted some fifteen feet onto the rock-solid ground! I knew I was taking a chance on breaking my legs, but I’d seen stuntmen on TV redirect their momentum horizontally, so it wasn’t a big deal. But falling out of an airplane in my sleep is a big deal.

       The nightmares persisted into my adult life. During 1977, while stationed at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, my aggravation over losing sleep hounded me into confronting my fear of heights. My nightmares now fixated on a situation where I’m standing on the edge of a towering cliff, unable to control my body as I frightfully lean into the abyss.

       Badgered by this recurring nightmare, I decided to challenge my fear. The opportunity came on a winter night while working as an SAT (Security Alert Team) member guarding the special weapons storage area. I listened to Ned Keller describe his ice climbing adventures in the White Mountains while we patrolled the perimeter road around the weapons storage bunkers. Hearing him recount dangling hundreds of feet in the air from a vertical ice face gushed adrenaline into my veins. I took a deep breath and asked him if he would teach me how to ice climb. I didn’t tell Ned that the thought terrified me to the core. I wondered why he couldn’t see the fear on my face. Perhaps he did. We talked about it while we drove. He hesitantly agreed to begin teaching me the following Saturday.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       This Saturday in January is sunny, windless, and cold. We drove to the foot of Mount Webster in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I reckon it was about 20°, so I had packed all of my Security Police cold-weather gear into my canvas hawk bag, just in case.

       Ned watched as I bundled up before we hiked up the mountain. “If you had brought several thin layers of wool, Scott, you could peel off the layers as physical exertion warms you, and then put them back on as needed.” Ned handed me his extra pair of crampons since we wore the same size shoe. “But I suppose you’ll be alright wearing military gear,” he concluded.

       Crampons are climbing boots that have metal claws extending from the toes. These claws enable a climber to obtain a toehold in the ice. Using Ned’s extra pair of crampons saved this Airman First Class what seemed like a lot of money then. I wore my mukluks for the hike up the mountain to the vertical ice face because they kept my feet warmer and gripped the snow better. I stuffed an extra scarf, mittens, and my loaner crampons into my knapsack along with Ned’s suggested chocolate and granola bars for quick energy. We both secured ice axes (resembling a pick mattock) to our harnesses and strapped on insulated canteens of water.

       We had already scouted the icefalls on Mount Washington earlier that morning. Ned didn’t like them. “One should never ice climb where the ice has a white color to it. That means there is too much air in its makeup. Clear isn’t good either; that indicates it’s too thin. A royal blue is ideal. That’s what we want,” he emphasized, “because we don’t want to die today, do we?”

       “No, sir! We DO NOT want to die today!”

       We hiked up a steep snaking ravine on the crystallized surface of several feet of snow. “Don’t step near any big boulders that protrude through the snow in this creek bed,” he coached. “There are often pockets of air around them into which we could fall.” Around the next bend, I had to help Ned out of one of these cavernous pockets beside a boulder entombed beneath a thin layer of snow.

       We trekked steeply uphill for more than an hour before we arrived at a vertical icefall. My gaze stretched upward; my heart thumped rat-a-tat-tat; my eyes bugged out in awe of the hundreds of feet of sheer royal blue. Adrenaline gushed! I’m on the verge of panic. I’ve cornered myself with no honorable way out! Breathe deeply and slowly, Scott.

       “I’m going to describe the procedure that we’ll follow for belaying up the ice face,” advised Ned. “We must strictly adhere to this procedure—no deviation—NONE! Got it?”

        “Got it, Ned—no deviation.”

       “Since this is your first ascent, it will be a tedious procedure babying you up the icefall. I will be securing you to an ice screw so I can use you as my stationary belaying anchor while I continue up the wall at an angle. That will preclude me from knocking you off the ice if I happen to fall. Clear so far?”

       “Crystal clear.”

       “No deviation?”

       “No deviation—none.”

       “When you are belaying me, you must keep this nylon rope wrapped twice around your hips, like this.” He demonstrated the rope’s position. “That way, if I fall, you can absorb the drop of my full weight on your hips with minimal discomfort, and release just enough rope upon my impact to keep from jolting the ice screw beyond its tolerance. Are we clear?”

       “Perfectly clear, Ned.”

       “Do not—I repeat—do not let the rope slip up around your stomach or abdomen. DO NOT—because if I fall, the sudden strangulation above your hips will expel the air from your lungs. I might not be able to get a screw in the ice before you pass out from lack of oxygen. Got it?!”

       “Got it!”

       “I hope so.”

       Our fingertips had lost a substantial degree of sensation during the physical inactivity of our training session. Ned showed me how to regain circulation in my fingers by whirling my arms around and around in helicopter fashion. The centrifugal force resupplied my fingers with warm blood, restoring my sense of touch.

       Our ascent resembled an inchworm zig-zagging upward. Ned implanted two screws to my right above me about six feet apart and then came back down to coddle me along the path of those screws. He secured me to the uppermost screw and then repeated the procedure to my left above me.

       At the point where I was about eighteen feet off the ground and Ned was angled another twelve feet above me, he hollered, “Are you ready to catch me?”

       “Yes, sir!”

       Ned pushed himself off the wall of ice. Several inches of rope slid through my hands before the friction of the rope around my hips stopped his fall about six feet below me. Ned swung like a pendulum; the rope hinged on my hips.

       “Good job, Scott,” as Ned cranked a screw into the ice.

       We repeated this procedure numerous times, and everything went like clockwork until we ascended to about a third the length of a football field. Ned had told me never to look down. But I did. I began to panic!

       I issued Ned rope as he worked his way up the ice diagonally to my right. Anxiety ravaged my awareness of the rope’s position around me. He had begun to thread a screw into the ice when his crampon lost its grip. Ned’s weight easily popped the partially secured screw. A loud crack resonated across the ice face. The only other screw between us had caught his weight for a moment, and then it popped too!

       Ned dropped some twenty feet. Just as he had vociferously warned me not to do, I had let the rope slide up around my abdomen. His fall violently constricted the rope around my mid-section, whooshing all of the air from my lungs. I could not inhale without first letting go of the rope.

       “Are you okay, Scott?!” Ned yelled.

       I couldn’t speak without any air in my lungs to expel. Over that timeless span of seconds, I began to black out.

       Ned had seen where the rope circumscribed my abdomen. He screamed his plea into my mental fog. “HOLD ON TO ME, SCOTT!!! JUST A FEW MORE SECONDS!” Crossing over into oblivion, I heard Ned excitedly order, “I’m good, Scott! Let go of the rope!”

       I had nothing left as I slumped backward, my body dangling from the carabineer attached to the ice screw in front of me. I refilled my lungs with no time to spare. I promise you that I did not let the rope stray above my hips again. But you know what? I wasn’t afraid anymore, either.

       I couldn’t quite swallow Ned’s effusive praise for my having saved his life after I had disregarded his command to keep the rope around my hips while I was belaying him. We descended to the base of the icefall. Looking up, it dawned on me: I would’ve frozen to death on the face of Mount Webster if I hadn’t held on to the rope till Ned could get that ice screw in. Ned would’ve taken the rope with him to the bottom.

       We had a blast retracing our path down the winding rivulet toward Ned’s Jeep. We were both wearing our nylon flight pants that slide smoothly on crystalized snow. Ned showed me how to hook my ice axe under my arm and use it as a brake to keep this human toboggan from flying out of the sluice as we zoomed to the bottom of Mount Webster on our butts.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       Ice climbing put my fear of heights into remission for well over a dozen years; however, about the time I moved to South Africa, that same distressing nightmare on the towering cliff returned. Reluctant to venture near a vertical drop off, even behind a guardrail, I presumed that if I could overcome my fear once, I could do it again. But I preferred to avoid a repeat episode of Mount Webster.

       In October 1993, while living in Johannesburg, South Africa, I arranged a trek to Mount Everest for the following April and May. I trained rigorously for six months because I wanted to make the trip enjoyable rather than endurable.

       In April of the following year, I traveled to the little Nepalese town of Lukla and trekked for nine days to the base camp on Mount Everest, followed by another eight-day return trek back to Lukla. En route to and from Mount Everest, the Sherpas, porters, cooks, Charles (a British trekker), and I traversed a couple hundred miles of narrow pathways cut into the Himalayan mountainsides. The width of those paths ranged roughly eight to twelve feet wide. Having trained ferociously for six months at 6,000 feet altitude in Johannesburg, I often bounded well ahead of the others.

       Hiking along those dizzyingly high trails, I periodically stopped, turned toward the edge of the precipice, baby-stepped forward, and faced my fear head-on. I stepped closer to the brink of my phobia each time. One slight movement away from death, I inhaled slowly and deeply, and then I looked down into the abyss for several seconds. I continued to deliberately breathe in and out while the blood raced through my heart. Often, I could see a tiny white thread that represented a raging river at the bottom. Its thrashing white waters were silent to my ears where I stood thousands of feet up. If I had leaned forward as my recurring nightmare had me do, I wouldn’t have dropped straight away; my carcass would have ricocheted a couple of times before I stopped. Once my heart came down out of my throat, I baby-stepped backward and continued on my merry way.

       Anyone would’ve reasonably thought that seventeen days liberally sprinkled with that would have erased any possibility of my ever being afraid of heights again. Anyone would have surmised correctly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

       The nightmares never came back after Everest, but I speculated that a little preventive medicine would keep them away. I booked a freefall with Skydive Kentucky for the morning of my 55^th birthday. My girlfriend Bobbie drove with me from Louisville to the airport in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, on the morning of August 6^th, 2011. Even though I no longer woke up in the middle of the night filled with fright and soaked with sweat, the prospect of jumping out of an airplane intimidated me.

       Okay, it frightened me!

Click here to read Part 2 of “Conquering My Fear of Heights”