Beliefs,Values and Hard Decisions

The team celebrating on learning Sharon and Dwayne had reached the summit.

The whole team was ecstatic.  Sharon and Dwayne were on their way down from the summit of Everest. Sharon had become the first woman from the western hemisphere to summit the world’s highest mountain; we had climbed by a route no-one had successfully climbed before (and in fact no-one has climbed it since), and we had accomplished these world firsts with a tight team of thirteen, limited use of supplemental oxygen and no hired load carriers. We all felt we were on top of the world.

However, there was more in store for us as a close-knit team that had set a standard  that included the highest safety objectives in a seriously hazardous environment: we had agreed to make every decision with the overriding requirement that everyone came home alive.

We had a second summit team ready and eager to make their own attempt. Barry and Albi had graciously stepped aside to allow Sharon and Dwayne to make her historic reach for the summit with the maximum resources in support. Now, the ropes and camps were in place, the route was open, and I had promised Barry and Albi they could go for it if we had the resources to support them.

Albi and Barry

But we didn’t. A crucial element of our safety plan was to have support climbers on the mountain behind our summit team, ready to come to their rescue if they got into trouble. Everyone else on the team was exhausted, burnt out, drained by three months of grueling effort under punishing conditions. We had no support climbers to send up with them.

I made the most difficult decision of my climbing career and told Barry and Albi they had to come down. They couldn’t accept it and we argued back and forth for hours – they insisted they were experienced and fit, they understood the risks, the prize was there for the taking. 

This is a classic collision of perspective. As climbers, Barry and Albi could see their most coveted goal within reach, could feel their commitment, their self-confidence, their belief in their ability to get the job done. I could feel all that – I am a climber too. But as leader, I was stewarding a wider perspective – I remembered and remained committed to our foundational value of safety for everyone, I knew it couldn’t be set aside and remain a genuinely primary belief. It was my job to stand up for that value, the primacy of that belief, alongside our climbing ambitions.

I had good reason. In the previous few years, I had found my best friend’s body after a fatal fall from an ice climb in the Rockies. Not long after, my brother was killed in an avalanche. On our previous expedition to Everest, four people had been killed in two separate incidents, both preventable with better leadership and planning, in my opinion. I was more than primed to treat safety as a top priority – I had committed to the expedition with a clear understanding that we all agreed we were bringing everyone back alive, no matter what.

Years later, in his memoir, The Calling, Barry described our difference as “a banker’s decision, not a climber’s.” (Our principle sponsor was a bank, and he was suggesting I didn’t want to risk anything going wrong after the big win we had just recorded, for the sake of wowing the sponsor.)  I believe this is a misunderstanding. My decision was a leader’s decision – if safety is your highest value, you don’t put people at risk for the sake of a seductively tempting goal.

This was my first really conscious experience of exercising a key leadership capability when the stakes were high – the ability to hold competing elements of a dilemma as equally important, to see them in a both/and context, not an either/or context. Polarization is dramatic and emotionally seductive. Acting from a full valuing of competing intentions is difficult, but it is the responsible way, especially when lives are at stake.

Whether it is delivering a record level of production, cutting costs to the bone, maximizing quarterly results, if you have compromised safety, you haven’t achieved anything lasting or worthwhile.  If you get away with it, even multiple times, you have achieved only a temporary victory. Inevitably, the odds will catch up with you.

Over and over again, even in organizations that insist safety is top priority, I see people subordinating safety to performance goals. Only when a tragedy takes place do the true human values rise to the surface and a concerted effort is made to walk the safety talk.

A leader must hold the competing figures of every dilemma as equally important, and act from that perspective.

When the urge to act, to push through despite the risks, is strong, that is the moment to pause and reflect on what is really important.

Complacency and the Crevasse

Every work endeavour is loaded with safety pitfalls; in mountain climbing there is the omnipresent glacial crevasse, which you often have to cross on your route up and down a mountain.

Sometimes, a crevasse is completely hidden under a layer of thin hard snow forming a snow bridge, which can very suddenly collapse under you.They can be very difficult to detect. If you can’t avoid them, at least you can survive them by being roped to your climbing partner who will hold you in the event of a fall.

The Robertson Glacier

When the snow bridge over a crevasse gives way, it is remarkable how quickly you plummet.You have no chance to react, one moment you’re walking along, the next you’re dropping. In my case I plummeted 40 feet.

I hit my head on the way down and I don’t remember coming to a stop.When I awoke my shoulders were pinned between two walls of ice; my pack was wedged beneath me, and I was nearly upside down. Below me the gleaming blue ice disappeared into a deep dark abyss sending a wave of fear through me.

I looked down at my leg and could see blood beginning to seep from the bottom of my left gaiter.
I was wedged in so tightly it was hard to breath, let alone move. I was also very concerned that if I shifted my weight I would become un-wedged and plummet further.

I felt totally helpless; paralyzed by my situation. It was at this point the thought of death entered my mind. How ironic, I thought, as this was the first glacier I had ever walked on twelve years earlier and now I was going to die on it.

Looking up the crevasse I had fallen into. I wondered how I was going to survive.

It was one of those days when everything seemed right; we had been climbing for over sixteen hours in good weather.We had climbed a new route up an unclimbed face and were starting to descend our approach glacier.The sun was beaming down and the entire glacier formed a big solar collector. I had stowed my outer layer in my pack and removed my crampons as the soft snow was balling up in the spikes, making it awkward to walk. My climbing partner remembered that he’d left his camera were we stopped for a break and headed 500 meters back up to the slope while I continued on down the glacier, following the footprints we had created on the way up.

I waited motionlessly. My only hope was that my climbing partner would return and find where my tracks ended.

The cold from the ice blue walls was working its way into my bones.Thirty minutes, one hour passed, more, I don’t know how long.Then the sliver of sky above clouded over and it began to rain.

The rain was funneling down the glacier into the crevasse, soaking me with ice-water.

At least drowning would be quicker than hypothermia ;-)

My thoughts shifted to my partner. Maybe he had followed a different track across the glacier and would never find me because of the rain. I had to figure this out myself, if I was to survive. I knew that fear was normal in this situation, but that panic would kill me. I focused on the facts of my situation.

What was in my favor was that in my fall, I had not lost my ice axe.Years of climbing experience had taught me to hold onto it whatever happened; yet I did not have enough room to swing it.

So with small movements I chipped away a little hole above me, just big enough to set the ice ax into.Then I took a sling I carried around my neck and attached one end to the ice axe and the other to my harness, to prevent me from plummeting further down the crevasse.

Now I could pivot myself into a vertical position and remove my pack. Luckily my climbing rope was on top and I had a lanyard with a knife attached around my neck. I cut ten feet off the rope and made a rope stirrup out of one end and tied the other to the bottom of my second ice axe which I managed to set just above the first.

I used the rest of the rope to attach my pack to my harness.Then slowly, with blood still flowing from my right boot, I very slowly chimneyed my way up the ice, using a single crampon and the rope stirrup attached to the ice ax that I kept replanting six inches higher.

I was wet to the skin. It was a race against hypothermia and I was still afraid that I would fall back down and not be able to re-climb the vertical walls of ice.The crux came at the top. On both sides of the crevasse there was soft snow that would not allow me to get any purchase, it was like quick sand, or trying to climb out of water onto ice that keeps breaking away.

Finally after intense effort I rolled out, gasping for breath and nearly convulsing as my muscles contracted with hypothermia. I had come out on the upper side of the crevasse and had to get down off the glacier as soon as possible.

What would have been an easy leap hours before now looked so much wider. Still, I could not be immobilized by fear or indecision. I leapt and to my surprise and relief, I made it. On my way down I met my partner who had realized something had happened and was coming back up to look for me.

Reflecting on this near miss experience, I notice a couple of key things that ended in my life being seriously at risk:

My partner and I knew the safety benefits of climbing together – we could support each other and be a backup if something went wrong.When we split up that day, neither of us gave a thought to the assumption we were making about each others’ safety – we were flush with the success of our climb, it was a gorgeous day and an easy descent, and we got complacent without even realizing it.

When we split up, we could have at least made a plan to ensure we both followed the same route down. Even more conservatively, I could have waited for him, or gone back up with him.At the very least, we needed a way to keep an eye on each other while we were still on the glacier.

For me, the learning was indelible. Ever since, I have never gone out on a glacier without making sure we are roped together, no matter how benign it looks.

Fight Complacency

If you think you have mastered your job, watch out!

Complacency leads us to take risks we know we shouldn't. However, taking those risks is a choice and an action on our part. Never forget that it is our actions that lead to injury.