Throwing Ropes, & Other Thoughts on Charity

by: Stephen Palmer Monday, August 23rd, 2010

I did something stupid in December of 2007. And I don’t mean trivially stupid — I mean life-threateningly stupid.

A couple friends and I had the brilliant idea to go canyoneering through Spry Canyon in Zion National Park in the middle of winter.

Canyoneering is hiking through slot canyons that require a lot of rappelling to traverse, and they also involve hiking through a lot of water and extremely rough country.

Did I mention that this time we went in the middle of winter? Oh yeah, there was also six inches of snow on the ground, covering a lot of ice and tons of steep slick rock.

And there was also that minor detail of the head park ranger (a very experienced woodsman who had done our particular hike multiple times) calling us — not once, but twice — to practically beg us not to go in such conditions.

Being the intrepid (i.e. naive) youngsters that we are, we headed out against his advice and, we found out later, pretty much every survival instinct known to man.

An Uneventful — Yet Ominous — Hike

For the first mile or so, we enjoyed a leisurely, level hike down a sandy, dry riverbed. The subsequent hike up about 2,000 feet of snow and ice-covered slick rock should have been our first clue (no wait, second, counting the park ranger’s advice) that it might not be a good idea to attempt the canyon in those conditions.

After much dangerous slipping and sliding, we made it to the top of a high ridge, only to face a precarious descent down the other side.

We made it to the bottom and resumed our hike for probably another half mile, and at 1:15 in the afternoon arrived to the top of the biggest rappel in the entire canyon, a drop of 165 feet.

Staring down from the top of that, with ice and snow completely covering the entire descent, should have been our third clue that we might be getting into something over our heads.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20…

The Plunge

I was the first to go down. The day was filled with dumb mistakes, and this descent was no different.

One major mistake was that we failed to throw our ropes out far enough, so that they would drop to the bottom without getting tangled. As a result, I was fighting tangles and snarls in the rope the entire way down.

The rope got so tangled that it left a fateful knot at the bottom that would play a significant part in the rest of the day.

At the bottom of the cliff lay a pool of water covered in three inches of ice. The pool was about 15 feet wide, and I had no idea how deep it was.

I stood on the ice, held my breath, and prayed that I wouldn’t break through. I took off my backpack, got down onto my hands and knees, and tried to carefully creep across the ice.

After about five feet the ice betrayed me and I heard those sickening creaking and cracking sounds. Sure enough, it was too thin to hold and I plunged into freezing water.

Thankfully, the water was only waist deep, and so I hustled to break through the remaining ice and climb out onto a ledge on the other side.

I climbed out and I couldn’t feel anything from my waist down. It was straight out of those nightmare adventures you see on the Discovery channel or read in Reader’s Digest.

I started jumping up and down to get the blood recirculating. Meanwhile, my friend started his descent. Apparently my plunge into the water hadn’t yet dampened our spirits (or knocked the stupidity out of us).

A Disastrous Knot

After about 45 minutes, all three of us were standing at the bottom of this 165-foot cliff, ready to continue onward.

That’s when I made yet another major mistake.

In all of the anxiety of getting through the water, I failed to remove the knot from my rope and forgot all about it.

I pulled the rope through from the bottom until the knot hit the ring at the top, and my heart dropped through my stomach.

We were stranded.

We couldn’t go forward because our rope was stuck, and to go back up it would require an extremely difficult ascent.

My friend Barry decided to try the ascent. An experienced rock climber, he made it safely to the top.

Next up was Kent, a strong but lightweight guy who made it up with relatively little trouble.

That left me. I’m a 200-pound guy and I’ve never lifted weights in my life. Most one-armed men would have had a better chance of getting up that formidable cliff than me.

When I latched on to the ascenders and attempted to pull myself up, I felt what it must feel like to be a slug.

I was borderline hypothermic, hanging on to a rope and dangling at the bottom of a 165-foot cliff, not having a clue how I was going to drag myself out of that canyon.

Barry and Kent undoubtedly had fleeting thoughts of leaving me, but probably calculated the unpleasant task of telling my wife what happened, and decided against it.

So there I hung. I felt so helpless, and it was painfully frustrating that I had so little to add to the task of getting me to the top.

Somehow, some way, with a combination of Barry doing some innovative pulley systems with the ropes, and both Barry and Kent pulling from the top, we heaved my virtually useless body to the top.

I was completely dependent on the strength and position of Barry and Kent, and Barry’s knowledge, skill and ingenuity with ropes.

Furthermore, Barry’s foresight and preparation in bringing the right equipment saved us all; my lack of preparation, skill and strength was completely at the mercy of my friends.

Had it not been for their help, I would have been stuck at the bottom of that near-disastrous cliff. Where I was weak, they were strong. The process of getting me to the top took about two and a half hours.

After a miserable, 3-hour hike, we finally made it back to our car.

But we made it. We made it together, the strongest and the weakest, through teamwork, patience and longsuffering.

So what does all of this have to do with charity?

We are all on a wearisome journey together, in a slot canyon that we call earth life. We’re all doing the best we can to scramble and struggle our way through the incredibly arduous journey.

All of us make unwise choices or face challenges that are not even of our own making, and find ourselves at the bottom of precipitous cliffs, standing in dangerously cold water, staring up at the top wondering how in the world we’re going to climb out of what seems to be an impossible situation.

When those times come, the only thing that can save us is friends throwing down a rope to us and helping us climb out.

There are even some who refuse to grab the rope when it’s thrown down to them. We can’t force them to hold on, but we must still throw down the rope to every stranded sibling that we find along the way.

That’s our most important and divine job — to throw down ropes to our lost Brothers and Sisters and pull them to the top, so that we can all arrive safely Home together.

The strongest and the weakest, the bravest and the most fearful, the healthy and the afflicted, together, hand in hand.

There may be times when we’re tempted to condemn those we find at the bottom of forbidden cliffs, and justify our lack of charity by saying that they did it to themselves. But we’re all beneficiaries of one rope or another at various times in our lives.

So to whom can you throw a rope today?

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Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.