Ep. 232 Pete Tapley — Live to Tell

When I signed a copy of Extreme Alpinism for Pete in 1999 I wrote, "The moment of terror is the beginning of life. Be scared." I signed the book to a reputation—to hearsay—instead of signing it to the actual man. Years later, having become friends, he reminded me of the inscription. The phrase was my response to hearing a story of him bolting routes in Hyalite Canyon, sacrilege to me at the time; reducing risk to pursue purely technical difficulty and permanently altering the resource by chasing that grail. We had a good laugh 25 years after the fact ... we are both still alive to do so.

In the moment of our early encounters I couldn't see the similarities between us. I focused on the hot-button issue in my own philosophical pursuits so I missed what could have been an influential and powerful relationship.

What I couldn't see then was that Pete strove to connect with nature through adventure, exposing himself to great risk in exchange for the promise of great reward. That individual reward, when communicated and shared, becomes inspiration, becomes progression ... reinforcing the interconnectedness of the community, the climbers seeing and seeking and pushing limits out on the edge.

Now that we are on the backside of the arc, the offramp so to speak, and still alive to be wondering, "What now? What next?" we sat down for a conversation.

We spoke about the influence of music on climbing as an activity and attitude in that era, when there was a soundtrack to everything. The punk rock cry was "no future" and that might seem claustrophobic or oppressive but our interpretation of it was that, "If I have no future then I am utterly free to act in the present, to do what I want to do right now because I'm going to die anyway." But there was no map, no guideposts; we had to manufacture our own rites of passage into adulthood because the rites that were culturally common before no longer existed. Without a map, with only casual insight from brief exposure to mentors, we followed what we could, imitated what seemed appropriate, and struck out into a wild world where those who tried the hardest seems to live the shortest lives but we went there anyway. And somewhere out there we learned that fear is not a barrier, it's just good information.