I never doubted that I was going to keep climbing.
My mindset is very much one that if you start something, you finish it.
Full stop.
This is something I learned as a Boy Scout. I was 9 years old, and we were doing the mini-Olympics. We got to the park, and immediately, I was in awe of the 400-meter track.
I want to run that.
I told the coach that’s the event I wanted to do. It was my first competitive experience, and I started running the race like I was about to win the Olympics! I was blazing fast, absolutely flying for the first 300 meters.
Then I ran out of gas.
I thought I was dying, and I pulled out and quit.
My Dad met me at the finish line, and he was very disappointed.
“When you start something, you finish it. It doesn’t matter if you finish last, but you finish,” he told me.
That lesson has stuck with me for the rest of my life.
So I knew that when I put my feet down at the start line of 29029 Snowbasin, I was going to go until there was nothing left, until time ran out, or until I climbed it 13 times!