Throwing Ropes, & Other Thoughts on Charity

January 24, 2008 by Stephen Palmer

I did something really stupid the other day. 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. For those who may be unfamiliar with the sport, 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. For all intents and purposes, it’s a fairly safe and enjoyable sport that doesn’t normally involve as much danger as it might initially sound.

But 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. naieve) 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. It appeared to be a manageable hike down in good conditions, but with the snow and ice we had to use our ropes to rappel to the bottom. 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

We had two ropes–a 200-foot long rope, and another 165 feet long, just barely enough to get us to the bottom. The way it works when you need two ropes is that you tie the two ends together, put one rope through a ring that’s bolted into rocks at the top, and pull the rope through until where you’ve tied off in the middle gets to the ring at the top, and both ends are at the bottom. By doing this, you can get to the bottom and pull one end through to retrieve your rope and continue onward.

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 knot at the bottom, a fateful knot 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, relying upon nothing but a little knot, with no assurance that it would hold and not break free.

In the absence of a lot of choices, my friend Barry, the most experienced and crazy in the bunch, decided to try the ascent. By putting all of our weight on the rope, it seemed like it was going to hold. We crossed our fingers as Barry climbed up. To get up required the use of ascending devices, which are handles that attach to the rope that can slide up, but will not slide down. It’s excruciatingly difficult to use one hand to pull upward to give some slack, and then to slide the other hand up as far as you can get it. It’s slow, painstaking and arduous work. Being an experienced rock climber, Barry made it safely to the top.

By this time, it was 2:15 in the afternoon, and we knew that we had about three hours of daylight left, to get through a canyon that none of us had experienced. We had a decision to make. If we went forward, we had no idea what we were facing; it was uncertain. If we went back the way we came, we knew that it would be an incredibly strenuous hike out, but we knew what we faced. We chose to go back. This meant that we had to get two more guys back up 165 feet before our hike even began.

We started by sending Kent up, 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.

By the time we all got to the top, it was 5:15 p.m. and darkness was rapidly closing in on us. We were still left with about a two-mile hike back to the car, which included going back up the steep ridge that we had rappelled down, and back down the other side of dangerous slick rock — all in the dark. In the interest of time, I’ll save you the details. Suffice it to say that it was a three-hour, miserable hike in the dark, with only two lights to share with three people, through some of the roughest country imaginable. 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. Before we all headed out to life, our Father called us–His children, brothers and sisters–together and explained the journey to us. He said that it wouldn’t be easy but it would be worth it, and He stressed that it was going to take a lot of teamwork. I can imagine that He would have gently, yet earnestly, pleaded with us, “Please help each other to get back. Please don’t put each other down. Please don’t forget that some of you will need more help getting back than others. Each of you will be given gifts–don’t abuse them by looking down on others who don’t share your gifts. Use your gifts to lift and serve and bless the lives of your Brothers and Sisters, even and especially when they are not easy to serve.”

We’re all doing the best we can to scramble and struggle our way through the incredibly arduous journey. All of us, at one time or another, 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 one or more of our Brothers and Sisters throwing down a rope to us and helping us to climb out.

Sometimes it’s all we can do to simply reach out, grasp the rope, and hang on for dear life, completely dependent upon the strength, mercy and compassion of our saviors. See, Christ was our Savior from sin, but He also commanded us to be like Him; in other words, we must all be saviors to the best of our ability.

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 what if Christ said this about us? We’re all beneficiaries of one rope or another at various times in our lives. Even the best among us would have been damned to a miserable eternity at the bottom of the cliff of sin, had it not been for the rope that Christ prepared and threw down to us. None of us can make it back Home without the Savior’s rope we call the Atonement. He won’t force us to grab it and hold on, but He always extends it to everyone equally.

The scriptures speak of “saviors” on “Mount Zion.” After my canyoneering experience, I like to think of them as “rope-throwers” on Mount Zion. That’s our commission from our Father and oldest Brother–to throw down ropes to our fellow Brothers and Sisters who have gotten themselves into holes that they just can’t climb out of themselves. We are to emulate the example of Christ, and extend our own arm of mercy to those in need. We show our gratitude for the ropes that have been thrown to us by returning that same mercy to others.

As Christ said in Matthew chapter 25, “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”