My head was bleeding profusely from the four-inch fracture in my skull. Vision blurred from the concussion, I tried to figure how I had gone from sleeping in my bivy sack to convulsing in terrible pain. Joel, hearing rocks fall down, called my name. I did not respond and he opened up my sleeping bag to find me unconscious, eyes open, pupils dilated, breathing rapidly...
The pain began shooting from my lower back. Mentioning this to Joel, he rolled me over. A gapping hole the size of a baseball led to my spine and oozing black blood coagulated in my jacket. Rocks, plummeting from at least 40 feet, had hit my head and back. When I asked Joel how bad he thought the injury looked, he replied "It's not that bad."
What would you do in this scenario? You're with one companion scaling the tallest peak in South America and suddenly find yourself regaining consciousness, bleeding from your head and spine, and unable to call for help. I for one would probably just pass out to avoid the inevitable pain of certain death. Joe Forrester, however, waited hours for his climbing buddy to descend Mount Aconcagua and seek help. After being airlifted out of the rugged wilderness that almost claimed his life, Forrester underwent surgery back in the US for his injuries.
He was climbing again two months later.
As a 21-year-old mountaineer, Forrester is not your typical college post-grad. Though he is working as a para-professor at Colorado College, his alma mater, and is applying to medical school (he's been accepted to the University of Virginia and has interviews at both Dartmouth and the University of Colorado), his focus is not merely on the impending leap into grad school. Forrester has bigger things on his mind; things like the world's most challenging mountains.
An avid technical climber and outdoorsman, Forrester first scurried up a rock at the age of five with his uncle. He started climbing seriously during his senior year in high school and continued to do so through college at CC, regularly taking road trips around the Rocky Mountain region in search of new rocks.
Forrester climbed recreationally in high school and was putting the finishing touches on a climbing wall he was building in his garage when we first met in 2000. He was a typical kid in many ways (garage climbing wall excluded) in that he pursued other athletic interests, worked in a fish store, and tried to meet girls outside of his all-male private high school. Overall normalcy aside, Forrester always had a passion for the extreme.
"I was a good pole-vaulter in high school, fifth in state," Forrester said. "But I was looking for a sport that was a little more adventurous."
Rather than becoming a professional skydiver or crocodile hunter to satisfy his adrenaline cravings, Forrester took his climbing to another level. He has since climbed innumerable faces, chimneys and ledges across Colorado, Utah, Alaska and as far away as South America. The technically most difficult climb he has finished to date was the first clean ascent of Repeated Exposure at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs where the line goes clean at C4-C4+. (I don't know what that means either, but it sounds like something Spiderman would probably enjoy.)
Putting this technical climbing jargon into layman's terms, Forrester described the climb's potential "death falls" of over 80 feet, and a rock quality that was "something akin to finely-ground dry kitty litter." Not quite your average everyday nature hike.
When asked why he continues to risk life and limb while climbing, Forrester cites the relationships he has formed through a shared passion for this extreme hobby.
"The friends I have made climbing are some of my closest," Forrester explained. "When you are responsible for someone else's life, and they are responsible for yours, a level of respect and confidence develops."
And even if he listened to the voice of reason, he says he couldn't stop if he wanted to.
"The fear aspect of climbing is pretty addictive," he added. "It is very rewarding to push yourself to your limits, with the ultimate sacrifice at stake. Knowing that you are responsible for your life and dealing with that responsibility in a mature manner is exciting."
With a trip to Tanzania scheduled for the summer and an eventual goal to climb the Cassin Ridge on Denali in Alaska, Forrester does not see himself cutting back on climbing as he enters the next chapter of his life. Though skeptical at times, his family has supported these endeavors.
"My parents are somewhat uncertain as to how they feel about me climbing," Forrester said. "But they love the fact that I am so passionate about my sport, and are proud that I am able to pursue this passion as well as perform well in school."
Unlike some extreme athletes who pursue unusual feats for acclaim and ego validation, Forrester climbs out of pure love for the outdoors and a thrill for overcoming the uncertain. He absorbs both the beauty and the treachery of the wilderness, often pausing to marvel at those phenomena that dwarf even the greatest of men. In West Side Story, a trip report on his attempt to become the youngest person to climb all the Fisher Towers in Utah, Forrester wrote not only about his experiences on the rocks, but also about the awe-inspiring majesty of his goal.
"As I walked back along the Titan trail to my truck, the canyon walls began to glow," he wrote. "The Fishers, grotesque mud and cutler towers, seem to fluoresce an eerie red when the afternoon sun hits them. It is fantastic."
Though many probably think that Forrester's passion borders on insanity, we should all be lucky enough to at once accomplish our goals and realize how small we are in the grand scheme of the world. And if it takes dangling from the edge of a cliff to achieve this awareness, maybe we should all go out and buy some rope.
Kristy Cunningham is a senior majoring in philosophy. She can be reached at kristen.cunningham@tufts.edu
