Part One
For our first multipitch climb, we took on a slab.
In rock climbing, pretty much any wall short of a vertical ninety degrees counts as a slab, and as long as the rock leans back, you can potentially stand on it. That is why footwork is everything on a slab. It frustrates me sometimes because good handholds give me peace of mind, yet a slab offers nothing to grab onto. Instead, it acts like a capsule toy machine that only spits out random footholds, so finding the exact one you want comes down to pure trial and error. I can only scan the surface with my naked eye for vague patterns, though that fails most of the time. Because of this, I have to feel my way around with my feet, and my odds improve once I test each placement carefully. Putting complete faith in a few millimeters of rock under your toes is the real secret to survival out here.
Rainwater had washed over the angled rock face for ages, carving out ripples and waves. The protruding features were rounded rather than sharp, making them comfortable to hold, which made the climb much easier for me.
While we were sorting our gear at the base, another couple walked up next to us. The woman had a prominent belly and was already six months pregnant. I know most people would view this as reckless, but from another perspective, it clearly showed total mastery of the craft and a deep love for climbing.
Sometimes we really need to stop making excuses just because something looks hard, and whenever I am tempted to make one, I ought to think of them.
Once our gear was racked, we swapped leads going up as the view gradually opened behind us. The route turned out to be easier than expected, so we reached the top before we even knew it. With no trees left for shade, the sun baked us through the thin clouds until sweat was pouring off us uncontrollably.
Just as we topped out, the couple behind us caught up at a brisk pace. Watching the guy move so smoothly while building a clean and elegant anchor, I could not help admiring how professional he was. He told us they were from Belgium and worked as arborist rangers who climb trees for a living, which explained why they were right at home on the ropes. He had started rock climbing when he met his girlfriend, and he had been at it for over four years now.
After a quick breather, we got ready to rappel down.
Getting down is both complicated and full of hazards.
The first issue is rope management, which is an old familiar headache. It feels like trying to untangle a giant knot of wired headphones out of tree branches against the clock, then flaking the line cleanly so it hangs straight down the cliff. This is not just physical work, as it also tests your wits and your patience.
The second issue is finding the right way down.
What happened next genuinely rattled me. Feeding the rope through my device and letting gravity pull me down from the top is a one way trip, because if you go the wrong way, getting back up takes serious effort.
I zipped down mindlessly until I touched down on a tiny ledge where the rope ran out completely, leaving nothing behind me but a sheer and bottomless drop. Realizing I had gone off route and was entirely on my own, I tried to get myself out of trouble.
Since neither of us knew the technique for switching from a rappel to ascending a rope, my only way out was to climb back up to the fork under my own power. I gave that a shot, but it did not work. Even though the climbing itself was easy, the angle was still steep enough that I risked a bad fall without protection. On top of that, I had already switched into my hiking shoes for the descent, and the soles could not grip the rock at all. In a surge of panic and adrenaline, I ended up hauling on the rope with my hands while walking my feet up the slab. Because the distance was short, I managed to scramble back to the fork. Thank goodness it was a slab, because I hate to think how that would have ended on a vertical wall.
After wrestling with the ropes for a long time, we finally had our feet back on solid ground. The couple who rappelled before us had vanished long ago. This was our very first time researching routes on our own and climbing outside of Germany. Aside from that hiccup on the descent caused by our inexperience, we handled our safety systems reasonably well the rest of the time.
A Quirky Farm Stay
At the place where we were staying, roosters started crowing nonstop outside around four or five in the morning while a faint whiff of sheep manure hung in the air, and cats staked out the glass doors to see if anything was stirring inside.
For this trip to Sardinia, we chose to stay on a working farm rather than in a hotel or an apartment. The farm sat on the eastern side of the island not far from the crags, though you needed a car to get anywhere.
Turning off the main road and bumping down a dirt track brought us right into the courtyard. A low farmhouse stood in the center next to a leafy garden, while a massive sheep pen stretched out in the other direction with pigs kept along one side and a chicken coop tucked out back. Aside from the penned livestock, the resident free spirits were the cats and dogs. They tore around the property every day and rushed over excitedly whenever they spotted someone. The dogs had some hilarious quirks, like flopping over to show their bellies or dragging their front paws along the ground, whereas the cats gathered around begging for attention and purred like little engines the moment you petted them.
Our favorite cat was a brown tabby who acted like the local boss, complete with a white cat trailing behind him as his sidekick, and every day he lounged by our window waiting for snacks and chin scratches. He was remarkably bright and intuitive, figuring out how to climb a tree after we showed him just once. He even understood basic commands and waited patiently for his food, which made him feel like a remarkably soulful little creature.
The older couple who owned the farm looked after this whole sprawling family, staying busy from sunrise to sunset every single day.
One morning, thefarmer’s wife invited us to go see the horses. We followed her by car over to another small paddock that held a white horse, a black horse, and a donkey. The black horse was tall and powerful, the white one was playful, and the donkey was so wary that we could only sneak a hand out to pet it while its head was down grazing. We poured them a bucket of feed that looked like crushed grain, and they munched away happily.
Beyond feeding the animals, gathering fresh produce was the other big highlight of farm life. Our hosts gifted us some eggs laid by their own hens. These eggs had pale yolks and smelled completely clean without any trace of a gamey odor, tasting as fresh as could be. Full of gratitude, we cooked them up for breakfast, thanking the couple warmly while asking them to pass along our compliments to the hens as well.
They also invited us to watch them milk the sheep.
Their setup was partly automated, and the whole process was fascinating to watch. First they herded the flock into a holding pen, and once the door to the milking parlor opened, the sheep filed inside one by one. A long feeding trough ran down the room while iron bars divided the space into individual stalls. Once every sheep was in position, the farmer switched on the machine, and the stalls shifted backward to line the sheep up right along the edge of a raised step. With all their furry rears neatly aligned, the farmer stood below the step and attached vacuum suction cups to their udders to draw out the milk. Every now and then he rubbed their backs to check how the milk flow was coming along. As soon as that batch was done, he opened a gate on the far side, and the sheep bustled noisily into another pen right on cue, just as if they had rehearsed it.
Of course, the sheep were not born knowing the routine. To make sure milking day went smoothly, they had to run practice rounds the day before so the flock could get used to it. Mishaps still happened anyway. Most often a sheep would refuse to step into a stall and just stand there looking around, though one time a sheep barged in and tried desperately to push straight through to the second gate. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a ram with no milk to give, so the farmer promptly let him go.
Every creature on the farm played its own part. The older couple kept the whole operation running, the chickens crowed and laid eggs, the sheep gave milk, the dogs guarded the yard, the donkey pulled its weight, and the cats caught mice.
It truly was a farm full of love.
Part Two
On our second multipitch climb, we faced the rock wall with the open sea at our backs.
The route was stiff, and natural fear mixed with survival instinct makes you desperate for a solid hold you can actually trust. Yet because of how hard the climbing is, the more desperately you look for something secure, the less you can rely on anything. Most of the dependable holds require calm focus and a subtle touch to even notice. In that moment, dopamine and exhaustion crashed over me like a massive wave injected straight from the stone and the sea, wiping out any rational plan until my mind went blank and both my thoughts and breathing fell apart. Stuck in a spot like that, there is no turning back, so you just have to keep repeating to yourself that you must climb on instead of freezing up or backing down. You force yourself to take deep breaths because breathing is the only thing left under your control. Meanwhile, your mind and body are sprinting in opposite directions, and there is no way to rein them in.
Honestly, you cannot even explain how you eventually made it up. All you remember is hanging by two completely pumped arms, squeezing the last drop of strength onto a decent handhold while stepping onto a tiny nubbin a few millimeters wide, then mustering everything in your body to inch upward like a worm with limbs. You did not really climb up that wall so much as squirm up it.
Looking at it from another angle, if we strip away our visceral fear of heights and exposure to view things through pure logic, everything that just happened was actually completely safe and protected.
When your strength gives out and you have to fall, a delayed tug catches you, leaving you swinging gently against the rock face. That brief delay is terrifying in itself, and even after the rope catches you, your confidence stays shaky as you catch yourself wondering if you are truly safe, half doubting an answer you already know is yes.
You are not going to die from this, you tell yourself honestly.
In the abstract, emotion and logic are constantly swinging back and forth. During moments of perceived risk and terror, emotion takes over almost completely, yet because the system guarantees we will not die, logic can still poke its head up just enough to analyze things methodically in what feels like an extreme situation. Finding stillness inside chaos creates a stark contrast that reminds me of a classic cartoon gag where a character walks right off a cliff and hangs in midair, only falling once they look down and realize nothing is under their feet.
Are the adventures available to us in modern life genuine risks, or do our bodies and a rush of dopamine simply tell us they are until we buy into the illusion without hesitation? Personally, I do not think it matters either way. Believing it or not carries no moral weight, since it mostly reflects your personality or just how your body and brain process the world, even if that process leans toward deception and theatrics. We cannot avoid risk altogether because it always finds us eventually, which only makes the question matter even less to me.
This brings to mind a line from the Heart Sutra:
Because there is no obstruction in the mind, there is no fear, and far removed from all inverted illusions, one reaches ultimate nirvana.
If topping out represents peace, I hope to stay calm and quiet throughout the entire climb up. Still, it takes a deeply mature and grounded wisdom to actually live that out on the rock.
