This past week, I spent some time with my good friend Brendan Shanahan backpacking and fishing in the Eastern Sierra, just outside of Big Pine, CA.  As experienced backpackers and outdoorsmen both, we got some great advice from my friend Eric Ongerth about where to go, our route, and what to expect.  Folks who know me probably would concur that I’m a confident sort (if not more than a little confident sometimes, when perhaps I shouldn’t be), so Brendan and I had no qualms about setting out to tackle a 30+ mile loop through the John Muir Wilderness’ high country.  We both live at sea level, and the low point of our trip would be the trailhead, at 8,900 feet.  We planned to summit Middle Palisade, elevation 14,012 feet, and cross three major mountain passes, including going over the Sierra Crest twice.

Battered and Bruised
As outdoorsmen with ample experience in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and Utah, we both felt prepared to handle whatever Eric and the Eastern Sierra could throw at us; as athletes, we both felt that we were strong and tough enough to carry some luxuries with us on our trip – beer, comfortable clothing and extra food, specifically.  As it happened, this lack of foresight, combined with a bit of overconfidence, made our trip a pretty intense one, physically.  The Eastern Sierra is a dramatically vertical place – we estimate that in the course of our 30 mile loop, we ascended and descended a total of 20,000 feet – and every bit of it was over 8,900 feet.  Beyond that, the footing is varied – it’s either unstable small rocks/gravel, unstable but slightly larger rocks, somewhat stable boulders, or snowfields/glaciers.  It’s not exaggerating to say that we both paid very close attention to each step we took so as not to roll an ankle.  Even so, we both were physically torn up by the trek – shins, elbows, forearms and hands are scraped, cut, blistered and bruised.

As this is ultimately a website about business, I need to sprinkle in some business metaphors here.  To paraphrase Peter Griffin here, I may answer that question with a story.

Up Shit Creek Without A Paddle
We knew we had to cross the Sierra Crest via South Fork Pass, which our description told us was a Class-Three climb, which has been described as “Imagine climbing a steep narrow staircase outside of a tall building without benefit of a railing: scary but easy.” To which I say: shenanigans.  South Fork Pass turned out to be a ~60° couloir full of snow/ice, with a very narrow and equally steep scree slope starting approximately halfway up.  Without truly understanding the implications, B and I started digging into the snow slope at the top of the snowfield below, approximately 300 yards above a very imposing boulder field.  Step by step we went up, with only boots (Asics trail running shoes in my case) and retractable trekking poles as equipment.  I’d be remiss not to mention the 50lb.+ packs on our backs, too.

At some point, it occurred to both of us that there was literally no option but to continue up; this happened more or less when we left the snow and started scrambling up the scree slope, and then ran out of literally anywhere to securely place more than two of our limbs at once.  We both made it to a relatively stable rock that supported our collective weight, and after catching our breath, came to the conclusion that our only safe option was to remove our packs, climb higher to a larger rock, then ferry our packs up with a rope.  B went up first, but we found ourselves woefully under-equipped – neither our footwear nor our rope was really up to the task; I’m absolutely certain that the only thing that allowed us to successfully get the packs up to us safely is sheer willpower.

At this point, we had what I’d term a moment of clarity: it was impossible to ascend any further using our ferry system (the terrain and fragility of the rope wouldn’t allow it) and descending was completely out of the question, because “descending” in this case meant a very sudden acceleration down the snowfield followed by an inevitable and equally sudden deceleration into the boulder field, 300 yards below.  Literally, the only option was to just sack up and pick our way up the slope above us, with our packs on.

Now.  I’m a very fit guy, as is Brendan.  Later in the trip, I had to do a pullup wearing my pack with one and a half hands, so to speak, to get myself off a very small ledge, and I’ve run plenty of fast marathons, but the last 100 vertical feet of South Fork Pass was quite literally the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done.  Perhaps it was the stress of knowing that really serious injury was at stake, but the action of pulling myself up hand-over-hand up a steep, unstable face while scared utterly shitless was a new experience for me.  When we got to the top of the pass, we both got a little emotional – and then we realized it had taken us fully 90 minutes to ascend 150 feet up that couloir.

The Lesson
It’s a cliche, but truly, you can overcome whatever obstacle is in front of you with a heavy dose of willpower.  When faced with no other options, success is fairly easy – it’s a matter of just plain doing it. Rarely in business are there literally no options other than success – because unless you’re doing some seriously illegal, Bernie Madoff shit, “failure” is normally just not achieving what you set out to do.  The business lessons I took from my experience climbing South Fork Pass are these:

1) Emphasize planning.  Really, truly, deeply understand what your needs are, and what your strategy is.  Brendan and I failed at this part by thinking a tad too highly of ourselves and not listening closely enough to our friend’s advice about gear.

2) Be willing to change course if need be.  We had to ditch two parts of our trip because we underestimated the energy we’d expend on other parts – we literally wore ourselves out, and missed some spectacular, achievable opportunities because of it.

3) When all else fails, bear down on the task at hand relentlessly.  In business, this might mean really long hours, or some tough confrontation with an employee or a client.  In my experience – in athletics, life and business- there is no substitute for hard effort.  Of course, when failure means a 300-yard slide at 50mph into a boulder field, that goal becomes a tad more, well, focused.

Finally: if you want to look at more pretty pictures of the trip which we’re calling “That Which Does Not Kill You 2009″, you can check out M+C’s Flickr.