Winter would be upon us soon, and we talked a lot about gear because gear can mean the difference between life and death at Barr Camp. Our first priority is outerwear, closely followed by mountain-climbing equipment. And outerwear is only just the start of an esoteric language. And this list doesn't even include basic items like pitons, bolts, drills, drill bits, carabiners, and quickdrawls, plus your real basics like helmets, hammers, ice axes, ropes, harnesses, and crampons. Arrogance would tempt fate and cause accidents and death.
Climbers are spiritual seekers.
For climbers, the mountain is a stone tablet upon which God writes secret messages. The wisdom of the ages and all a climber needs to know is written on the mountain. Climbers are like long-board surfers back in the 1950s in Santa Cruz when it wasn't necessarily cool to be a beach bum because the world didn't know what a beach bum was yet. It was simply enough to be stylin' in the surf. Life is not so much a journey as it is a ride.