Climber Emily Harrington Recalls Scary Fall Stories

When you have these moments where things don't go well, where you have a fall, or when you had your concussion, and you got really banged up, overcoming those things, what is that like? Because I would imagine that it's such a scary thing to do. Well, maybe for me, I know as much for you, but I'm watching pictures of you, my hands sweat. Like legitimately. Like Alex Hahnold freaks me out every time I see videos of him, because he's got nothing saving him. My hands start sweating. I can't handle it. No, I think all our hands sweat when we watch him. But yeah, so for me, it's, I think, for example, when I hit my head this time, the time I got the scar, I was on one of, my day had gone so perfectly. Like I was climbing super well. Everything was great. There it is. Ouchy. Yeah, that was the rock bottom moment. So I was climbing and I was in the sun. I slipped off. I felt like I was just going to have a really normal fall, super safe, like nothing bad was going to happen. And then I hit my head and I instantly like just felt the blood pouring down my face. And it was super dramatic and it was super scary. And I lowered down and Adrian sort of assessed me for concussion symptoms and tried to, you know, figure out if there was anything super serious. And it turns out that there wasn't really. And so it, it came time to decide like, oh, should I keep going or should I, should I give up? Like what, you know, what, what's the best course of action now? And honestly, in my head, I was like, part of me was like, I don't want to keep climbing. Like I'm emotionally kind of destroyed and, and drained. And I don't think I can do this. Tell me how it happened. Like what, what was the sequence of events? I was, so I, I was climbing this pitch and it's a pitch that I've never fallen on before. Um, and the next pitch is the hard one, which is where I think I went wrong because I was sort of thinking ahead. Like I wasn't focusing on what was happening in front of me. I was thinking about the next pitch. And I was like, I need to get this one out of the way so that I can focus on the hard one. And therefore I was climbing the sun when it's too hot. Like the friction's not as good. It's more slippery, all those things. And I was rushing it. I didn't rest enough. The friction is not as good when it's hot. Yeah. Why is that? You want it to be cold because your skin sweats. Oh, okay. And like the rubber on your shoes isn't as sticky. Like it's just the heat, the heat radiates off the rock. It just gets more slippery. Like imagine like a granite face just like baking in the sun. Like everything's more slippery and you're, you're all sweaty. And so it's just not ideal. And I could have waited, but I didn't. So I was climbing and I was like kind of traversing. And so I was trying to do this move and I rushed it and I slipped and I fell, but I had like a piece of gear down into my right. And I just didn't, I just didn't anticipate like the physics of how I was going to fall. And I kind of fell sideways and I couldn't get my feet out in front of me in time. And we watched the footage later. It was just like, it was kind of like my head just like bounces off the wall, like a, like a basketball. Um, and I must've just hit like a crystal or something with my forehead, like some sort of something sticking out of the rock. Um, and there was just blood everywhere. Like head wounds, they just, you know, they bleed, they bleed a lot. And so there was a lot of blood and I lowered down and I was super bummed. It was just like my confidence was sort of shattered. Like I could, I just kept thinking back to last year. I was like, Oh no, my attempts over everything was going so well. Like this sucks. And I was letting myself go to that place of doubt and that place of like, it's over. And last year when you hit your head, you hit your head much harder. Last year I fell on the first pitch of the route. Um, so close to the ground. But I felt like 50 feet and I hit a ledge and didn't, the rope like didn't catch me. I hit the ledge because I was, uh, again, rushing and not placing enough protection. And so you fell 50 feet without being caught. Uh-huh. Oh my God. I hit a ledge. Yeah. It was a real, it was pretty gnarly. How did you hit it? I don't remember because I got knocked out. Yeah. Um, but I had this crazy rope burn on my neck and, um, yeah, it was, it was pretty, I had, yeah, I had to get rescued like full on ambulance to the hospital, like spinal injury worries, all that. It was pretty serious. It was definitely the worst accident I've ever had. Um, and it was, I walked out of the hospital that day, which is incredible. Like that just doesn't happen very often. There's me dressed up like a burrito. And what, so this is when they were carrying you to the hospital? Yeah, that's a rope burn. Oh my God. I also don't know how that happened. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. And there's no footage of this, right? You didn't, you didn't review footage of it. There's a, well, it was dark when I started climbing. So actually is footage of Alex. Honnell was belaying me. There's footage of him belaying me. What does belay mean? Belaying is the person who holds your rope at the bottom. Okay. So he was like essentially holding my rope, but it's a little bit nuanced because the way we were climbing, we were doing something called simul climbing. We were, so we were essentially, I was tied on the top of the rope. He was tied onto the bottom of the rope and we were climbing together up the wall simultaneously in order to save time. And it's actually, it is a more dangerous form of climbing than just like one person climbing while the other person belays them. And then they, and then I would stop and bring him up and then we'd go on from there. Like instead we were climbing together. Whoa. That makes me nervous just thinking about it. Yeah. So if someone falls, you're kind of connected to them. Yeah. We are always connected to somebody when you fall. But if he had fallen, it would, it's, it's kind of a complicated form of climbing that not many people do. It's definitely like an advanced strategy. But so was someone filming? Yeah, I have a, I have a, a filmer who's making like a, a movie about me. And he was filming because he was there filming that attempt and he was filming Alex as Alex was like sitting on the ground, getting ready. And have you reviewed the footage? Yeah. Was it like watching yourself? It's pretty, it's pretty like, it's, it's hard. It was hard. I didn't watch it for the first few months. How long does it take to fall 50 feet? Imagine that's a few seconds. Like a, I don't know. What's the, how fast you fall? Isn't it like nine point? Yeah. Nine point eight meters per second. So it's a couple seconds. At least at least it felt that way. Oh, God. So yeah. So that was, that was something like a mental hurdle to get over for this year. And then this year, something similar happens only I was way higher on the wall, but I was really close to succeeding this time. And I had this part of me was like, well, I just want to give up. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to be done. Like I'm tired of this project. I'm over it. When you got over the first injury, the really bad one from last year. What was the process of recovery? Like how long did it take before you felt comfortable enough to climb again? You know, I was super lucky. I think I definitely got away with one. It was one of those things where I got away with one. Like I walked out of the hospital. I was back climbing. I took, I think I took a month off, but I went to like, I went to Ecuador and climbed a volcano with my dad and like went skiing and just did a bunch of things. Like how long afterwards? We went to Ecuador like four days later. What kind of crazy father do you have? He's awesome. My dad loves all sports and activities and he's like super passionate about everything. And this was his dream was to like go climb this volcano in Ecuador. And we've been planning it for months. And I actually felt that was one of the reasons I felt so bad that I got hurt. It was like, I was like, Oh no, I'm supposed to go on this trip with my dad. And like, you know, we had this whole plan. He's been training. He trained like for months. He's 65 years old. Like, you know, it was one of those things. So we went and we climbed the mountain and like, thankfully I was able to do that with him. It was really cool. What kind of like physical damage did you suffer in terms of like, how long did it take for you to recover? Honestly, I would say I felt pretty normal within a month. Really? So yeah, little back pain, but concussion, concussion. Yeah. The concussion symptoms were a little gnarly for a little while. But four days later, you're climbing a goddamn volcano. Yeah. Well, we're headed there. Yeah. How long after that before you were actually climbing? Maybe like three weeks. So while you were suffering from some of these concussion symptoms, you were climbing. Yeah, not recommended. We went to the doctor and she was like, you can't go to Ecuador. You shouldn't do that. And I was like, Yeah, that's nice. See ya. Yeah. When you watch the footage of the fall and you see yourself hit the wall and just the impact and what happened to you, does that obviously didn't deter you from doing anything, but has it changed the way you approach climbing? Yes and no. I think the reason that it was a little bit easier for me to overcome that hurdle was because I it was really obvious what had gone wrong and it was really obvious that the what had gone wrong was within my control. Like I simply had not placed enough protection for the difficulty of the route. It was an easy climbing for me, but it was really dark. It was cold. It was slippery. And I was like, I was just going too fast and not placing enough gear. Episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Go download Spotify. Much love. Bye bye.