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If someone dies, what do you do with their hiking shoes? I didn't think about that. After all, my husband, Cam, was 34 years old and had many years of climbing ahead of him. In December 2019, during the season of giving, I was sitting in my apartment stripping off his belongings. While some items seemed appropriate to donate (a ski jacket) or use (a laptop), there was a problem with his climbing shoes. We bought them together at Arch Climbing Gym in London in 2017 and they were a pair of his and her Scarpas. I went for a smaller size for better footing, but my feet were sore and imprinted out of them, and my little shoes were warm and sweaty. They were molded into our feet by the best years of our lives and carried these memories like ghosts. In the summer of 2018, we wore these shoes in the mountains of Catalonia, Spain. They sat on the shoebox as a reminder of the future I had imagined. It was too intimate to give away and it hurt to keep it, so I wrapped it in newspaper and threw it in a trash can outside. Then I went back to my apartment and hid the pair in the hallway cupboard.
Cam and I met in our early twenties while studying abroad in his hometown of Wellington, New Zealand. After two years together we moved to London, where I found a series of jobs in the media. One of my jobs was at a photo gallery hosting an exhibition of the work of mountaineer Bradford Washburn. I was fascinated by the tiny dots of climbers dotting the great peaks. The vast landscape contrasts with the crowded city outside the gallery window, and the quiet focus of the climber contrasts with my busy life. I booked my first climbing lesson at a local gym and invited Cam to come with me next week. We quickly fell in love with the sport's combination of physical exertion and problem-solving. After years of climbing indoors, in 2018 we used our savings to move to Spain. The mountains were closer there.
Olivia and Cam complete a multi-pitch climb in the Montserrat Mountains, Catalonia, Spain, in July 2018. (Photo courtesy of Olivia Jordan Cornelius)
We didn't have a car in Barcelona so we walked almost everywhere. One time, when I got on a train to a village that I had read was the starting point for a mountain trail, I didn't know where to go, so I went to the local police station. The police officer on duty happened to be a hiker, and in our broken Spanish and his good English, he managed to give us directions to an area with perfect conglomerate peaks. It has become our favorite climbing spot. Sometimes, on our way home, we stopped at a medieval chapel at the foot of the mountain to rest. I've never prayed, but I remember sitting in the chapel and being thankful for something, as if our adventurous lives were too good to be a coincidence.
After his summer in Spain, Cam was offered a job as a graphic designer at a film studio in New Zealand. I moved on New Year's Day 2019. Life has taken on a new rhythm. We found a new climbing gym and coffee shop and fueled up with an Americano before the climb. Then, after drinking coffee, Cam started to feel nauseous. Shortly after starting work, he started bringing home half-eaten lunches, and soon he was eating very little. One evening, even though he was tired, I convinced him to go out for pizza. On the way home after dinner, he vomited into a public trash can, tilting his head like a chicken so he wouldn't miss the liner.
On the Friday before Easter that year, we went for a walk in the forest. I thought the fresh air would be good for his stubborn cough, but he had to keep leaning against a tree stump to catch his breath. That Sunday, several months after he started feeling sick, he collapsed in the shower. When I found him curled up on the bathroom floor, he was thinner than I had expected or intended to see. We went to the emergency room and a scan showed a shadow and the doctor said there was likely a tumor all over the lungs. A week later, an oncologist confirmed the diagnosis. Kam has advanced gallbladder cancer and with treatment could give him another year to live “if he's lucky”.
Cam and Olivia at their wedding at Red Rocks Reserve in Wellington, New Zealand on May 1, 2019 (Photo: Olivia Jordan Cornelius)
Chemotherapy initially stabilized things a bit, allowing Cam to work at a film studio a few days a week. We decided to get married at Red Rocks, a rugged coastal area named for its unique geology. By that time we had been together for 7 years. We offered a ride to a group of German backpackers who were hiking the route we had walked just a few months earlier. After dropping them off, I watched them happily walk away in the rearview mirror. I think they had a whole new life ahead of them.
After several months, chemotherapy was no longer able to control the cancer. Cam switched to a different treatment that involved constant needle insertion into her hand. This time, a PICC line was attached and a tube was threaded from a vein in his arm to his heart. Once a mountain climber, his arm was tied and bandaged, and his shoulder was throbbing with cancer that had eaten away at the bone. But he encouraged us to keep climbing, from our couches and from our hospital beds. Sometimes I thought about it. Maybe you can take pictures of rock problems and make a map together at home. As if that wasn't enough. Like, so I don't feel like I'm some kind of fraud by being there without him, or feel guilty for climbing the wall when I need him to hold me to get up from the chair. To. I didn't go. As Cam's condition worsened, climbing became meaningless. There were many days when I thought it would be the last time I would spend time in the ER, whether it was a flu attack, suspected blood clots, or pancreatitis. Instead, his last days passed quietly as he gradually grew weaker and further away.
Our once adventurous life together ended in a stuffy hospice room. We decorated the walls with pictures of the beautiful places we visited. As if what we did could make up for what was lost. There was a photo of El Capitan that Cam had taken when we went to Yosemite the year before. We had met mountaineer Brad Gobright at the cafe and he said he could refill our coffee cups for free. We held on to them, but by the second morning the bottom of Cam's cup was so bent that we were worried he would get burned. I wasn't worried about getting injured while climbing. It's happened to others who made the mistakes we told ourselves we wouldn't make. But the reality is that good decision-making cannot protect you from all horrors. Even if you treat your body like a temple, you can still get cancer.
In the evening, I wandered behind the hospice building and took in the night air of Mother Nature. One night, as I was sitting on the cold concrete steps, I saw a headline on my phone that said Brad had died in a climbing accident. I rushed back inside to tell Cam. I shook his bony shoulders, eyelids drooping as I stared around the room. I said it over and over again, but he didn't respond. He never regained consciousness and passed away peacefully two days later, on December 5, 2019, just after midnight while I was sleeping next to him.
Hiking and climbing in Montserrat, Spain, 2018 (Photo: Olivia Jordan Cornelius)
What do you do when someone you share a common hobby with dies? Do you continue to do it? Maybe if we run together, I'll walk down the road alone and sad. Instead, I chose a sport that required a rope with a person at each end. Aside from autobelay, bouldering, and soloing, it's a two-player game. Cam and I bounced around the country and gyms, never putting down roots in the climbing community, naively thinking we'd always be able to climb with each other. I tried to convince myself that I didn't want to climb anymore. I unfollowed climbers on social media, stayed on the plains, and abandoned climbing with Cam's Scarpuss.
We chose a sport that required a rope with a person at each end. Aside from autobelay, bouldering, and soloing, it's a two-player game.
In the new year, I was scheduled to see a psychiatrist at the same hospital where Cam was a patient. To help me feel less alone, he told me that his childhood neighbors had died in swimming pools, and that he still thinks of them every time he smells chlorine. It was given to me. I asked if drowning people sink or float (it turns out they tend to sink first and then float). Perhaps because of questions like that, the fact that I was barely eating, or my mention that there was still a small pharmacy that stocked Cam's painkillers, he referred me to a mental health respite facility.
That night, a nurse took me to a normal house in the suburbs. When I went inside, the door was unlocked. Someone was checking on me every hour to make sure I wasn't going out the window. In the morning, I woke up and huddled by the window overlooking the city. There were kayaks in the harbor and we could see the movie studio where Cam worked. Cam's co-workers told me that even when he was so weak and his feet were so swollen with fluid that he couldn't tie his shoes, he continued to climb several flights of stairs to his office. When there was nothing else to climb, he climbed the stairs. I saw an old climbing gym on the left. I thought Cam would do anything to be here right now. He didn't give up on climbing — cancer took that away from him. We can still honor what we created together. I told one of the nurses that I should exercise, checked on my condition, and went where I needed to go.
It's been a year since I got my hands dirty with chalk. I entered the gym and headed over the roped climbing wall to the bouldering area in the back, the area for solo climbers. I sat on the edge of my mat, put on my shoes and curled my toes, ready to climb. Black holds routes for beginners. As soon as I left, I felt the weight of my sadness. Months of sleepless and irregular eating have changed my body. I learned that even the easy routes require concentration. It's purely a matter of where you place your hands and feet, without being disturbed by the rope or other people's noise. I thought about Cam day and night. But ironically, I hardly thought about him while climbing. So I kept climbing route after route.
Cam in Boulder, Colorado, October 2018 (Photo: Olivia Jordan Cornelius)
The second session was a humbling one where I realized I had a newfound fear of heights. I once saw someone call an ambulance after a bad fall. I once saw someone land in such pain that they peed on the crash pad. I wonder if Jim had intimidated them into feeling as hard and fragile as I am now. I once wore the armor of being in a duo, and my lover called for encouragement at the bottom of the route. After everything I'd been through, my mind was wired to expect the worst-case scenario, so I only climbed halfway up the route to shorten the fall.
I entered the gym and headed over the roped climbing wall to the bouldering area in the back, the area for solo climbers.
Last year, a friend called me and said she was climbing in Mexico with her new boyfriend. It looked like heaven in the photo. I was very happy for her, but sometimes I'd rather lie face down on a crash pad than act like I'm bouldering alone. The sound of climbing on warm rocks, the quick draw of a bolt, the birds…I miss him. I haven't been outside since Cam died. The landscape of my hobby is different now. A rock wall under the roof. It's just me and me solving problems and encouraging myself to try a little harder. On a good day, you might find it empowering. When I doubt myself and my abilities, I remember that I was the one who booked my first climbing lesson. I am as much of a mountaineer as Cam was a mountaineer.
I still live in New Zealand but bouldering at another climbing gym in another town. I'm dating a man who is a lot of great things, but he's not a mountaineer. I recently completed the most difficult problem I have ever completed. I'm the strongest ever, and no one but me really knows it. Someone approached me at the gym recently and suggested I join a social night where a bunch of solo climbers belay each other. Some of them climb mountains on weekends. I'm still not sure if I'm ready to climb with others and I haven't been outside in 5 years. Perhaps someday it will.
