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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

To what extent do people in this line of work feel fear as they do it? Is it mainly suitable for those rare people who either don’t feel fear, or the less-rare people who are looking for a rush, or does it just become mundane after sufficient experience, so that really anyone can do it?

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I'm a rock climber, not a tower climber, but I've been on climbs that are >1k feet above the deck. For me (and I gather most climbers), just hanging off an anchor at 1000 feet doesn't feel particularly scary. You're firmly attached to the rock with gear that you (hopefully) trust. For a tower, I'd expect it to feel even safer since the gear will be far more solid than some cams[0] jammed in a crack.

I (along with most climbers) still feel fear though! But it's specifically fear of _falling_ rather than just fear of being high up. In climbing, that comes when you _lead_ past your point of protection (where your rope is attached to the rock), creating the possibility of falling >2x that distance. In big wall climbing you might climb 10-50 feet before placing protection, so you are risking a potentially very big fall.

In tower climbing falls aren't possible (unless you screw up the system), because you are always clipped into at least one point of protection. I'd imagine that it feels more grueling than terrifying for most people comfortable with the heights.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device

Having worked on airplane design, I would never want to trust my life to a single piece of equipment - a single rope, a single clip, a single anchor point. I'd want a backup. It's hard to tell if those are fine, or one tug away from failure.

In climbing, most of our gear is redundant. Anchors are built from at least two pieces (but ideally more), our harnesses have two tie-in points, and modern belay devices rely on both a camming mechanism and a brake hand.

But there are still single points of failure. In particular, the rope. It’s not practical to bring up two full strength (single) ropes on climbs. Failures are very rare but do happen—generally because a rope is cut by a sharp rock.

Climbing is inherently dangerous, but accidents related to gear failure are extremely rare. The most common cause of death is human error (particularly on repels), followed by environmental factors like rock fall.

Thanks for the info. I do realize that weight would make some redundancies impractical.

There's a saying, though, among engineers - they can fix anything but the nut behind the wheel!

Do they make 'double' rope? I know there is the internal structure and the external protection but I'm thinking something more like two independent internal structures such that if one fails the other can still handle load, and just as importantly it's obvious when the rope is in this state so nobody starts with it that way - it's only as the last line of defense.

I don't know of anything quite like what you're describing, but there are "half" or "twin" ropes, which are meant to be used as a pair. They're each thinner and lighter than ropes rated as "single" ropes, but together are considered as strong.

I was thinking the same about rock climbing vs tower climbing -- I don't find rock climbing very scary because I'm always on a rope. In the YT video above[0] though, that guy doesn't appear to be tied into anything, except a carabiner he momentarily attaches once or twice for a rest and then takes back off when he resumes!! Incomprehensible! I'd be petrified :O

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42603235

I'm a longtime rock climber and climbed a tower professionally back in another life. With most things, it's practice with the gear that builds trust in your system. I can do most anything at a height these days because I know that I'm safe; it lets me push that lizard brain feeling away. I similarly experienced this learning to SCUBA dive a few years ago - it's horrifying! But the more time spent doing the thing, practicing the systems, failure modes, etc... let me relax and enjoy the fish rather than freaking out that I'm 70' underwater.

I tried scuba diving. At 30 feet underwater, I felt a constant bubbling panic that took a great deal of effort to push back on. I suppose I would eventually get accustomed to it, but that was the first and last scuba dive for me.

I climbed about 250' at highest, working for a WISP about 6-7 years ago.

The first climb, I got about 75 feet up. My body froze to the tower. I watched as I told myself in my mind 'go. Continue climbing.', and my body refused to budge. It was pretty surreal. After a bit of this back and forth I gave up and climbed back down. The boss told me "it's alright, everyone does that."

The next day I went up to the top of that one, 200' up. It's terrifying at times but it gets easier. It never got easy though, and I quit after just a few months. I thought about my wife and kids everytime I went up, and how if I splattered they would be devastated.

Pretty early on I dropped a nice Dewalt cordless drill. I was 150 or 200' up and I thought to myself "is that thing ever going to hit the ground?" I didn't even hear it impact, but could see it explode into a few pieces. Must have been a windy day.

Climber: I've climbed about 3000' above the ground and didn't feel a drop of fear during it. And then, at the top, after removing my harness, I scooched out on a rock that lets you see all the way down what we had just climbed, and holy cow was I nervous!

I think you learn over time that you can trust the gear/ partner / your judgement and technique. But that doesn't make all fear related to climbing disappear. There are situations in which fear is appropriate and I've been quite scared in them.

I've also done a lot of rock climbing. As other replies said, you get comfortable with the gear and the height and loose the fear.

When Covid broke my regular climbing habit. One interesting part of going back to it after a year or so of not climbing - I felt some fear of heights again.

It was mild fear, and didn't have me to hanging on extra tight or something. I remember the odd sensation of observing this fear in myself and thinking something along the lines "Oh that's weird, fear of heights - I don't remember the last time I had this."

Like a muscle, if you start training to be comfortable again it seems to come back quicker if you had trained it well previously. I guess fears have homeostasis too.

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