Recently I had a conversation with a close friend on the subject of intelligence. At issue was the importance of that trait in determining how well people interact with each other, and how well they communicate.

My friend opined, in the course of this conversation, that I possess above average intelligence.  I had to agree that standardized I.Q. tests seem not to contradict that assertion. Of course, as we all know, there are many ways of gauging intelligence. Formal tests are but one indicator of a very complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon. Unlike knowledge, though, I think we can agree that intelligence doesn’t change with age, at least not in the absence of other physiological influences.

The last thing I’d ever want to do is overstate my own capabilities or potential. To provide a more balanced picture, there’s a story I’ve been meaning to tell for some time. I think it might shed some additional light on the issue of my intelligence.

While in High School, my friend Scott Parker and I were seriously into rock climbing, rappelling, and other vertical work. We’d learned a lot from our early experiences as cadets in an organization tasked with (among other things) mountain search and rescue, and practicing those skills, tools, and techniques was a great diversion. Rare was the weekend that did not find us at or near some rocky precipice, discovering new ways to fling ourselves over the edge and live to tell the tale.

One such weekend afternoon, we’d wandered out to a large abandoned rock quarry located near the airport (KCHO) in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. We’d set out to practice descending using only a rope, a technique called rappelling. Rappels are far easier if the rope hangs free against a smooth, perfectly vertical face. At the northeast corner of this quarry was a cliff more than 100 feet high that fit the bill perfectly, having been precision-shaped by the drilling and blasting operations that created it decades ago.

The plan was for each of us to rappel to the bottom of the cliff, where we’d then use a less vertical but more interesting face to climb back up. We’d repeat the process to get as much practice as the remaining daylight allowed. With that plan in place, we set to work. The special Bluewater static rope was checked, thrown over, and secured to Scott’s Toyota Land Cruiser, which was pressed into service as our top anchor due to the lack of anything else suitably substantial at the top of the cliff. The car was positioned with its brakes set, wheels chocked, and doors locked. The rope was carefully padded where it crossed the sharp top edge of the cliff. Every knot, sling, and rigging was independently checked by each of us with a critical eye. Lives might depend on it. Ours.

The coin toss determined that I’d be first on the rope. I tied on my harness, took a figure eight descending device from my sling, and looped the main rope through it in the prescribed manner. I then clipped my harness to the figure eight, screwed the carabiner’s lock ring down tight to guard against accidental unclipping, and called Scott over to double-check my work. He pulled and tugged at a few things and nodded his approval. I eased over to the brink, put my feet on the edge, and leaned back, my braking hand gripping the lower part of the rope to lock it tightly into place. My T-shirt flapped in the wind as I hesitated a moment. After a second look at all the rigging, I waved to Scott, leaned farther back, and began to let the rope slip through my gloved fingers.

Climbers hate to rappel. While it’s a necessary skill, it’s the most dangerous thing that they do. Without question, this first moment when transitioning from standing vertically at the edge of a cliff to standing horizontally against it, suspended over the void, is the very hardest of all. It requires absolute trust in the equipment, complete confidence in one’s own knowledge and skill, and perhaps a small measure of insanity. Fortunately, I had all three.

I watched Scott, the Land Cruiser, and the rigging disappear from sight as I dropped below the rim. Feeling a bit better, I kicked away from the rock with my toes and let the rope slip five or six feet. It was a nicely-executed jump, I thought, as I landed against the cliff face again. A slightly longer one might be fun. Outward I sprang, this time sliding down more than ten feet before my feet met rock again. Something felt a little weird as I landed, but at this point I was pretty excited and had no reason to doubt my rigging. Everything was great. I bent my knees and decided to take another jump. I sprang, I dropped, and suddenly: WHAM! The rope locked right, and I bounced back into the cliff rather hard, my foot slipping and my body spinning around. My shoulder hit the wall, and my braking hand slipped–but I didn’t fall.

My heart was in my throat as I hastily recaptured the rope in my braking hand and righted myself. My shirt felt strangely tight, and the rope wasn’t moving. Then I saw it. On my last jump, the wind had blown my big, untucked T-shirt outward and it had been pulled into the figure eight along with the rope. It was now hopelessly entangled in the device, and was completely locking the rope in place. I couldn’t continue down.

Feeling a mixture of embarrassment and fear, I shouted up to the top of the cliff. “FALLING!” I wasn’t falling, but among climbers, this is a standard call that is reflexively responded to and guaranteed to get immediate attention. About one second later, Scott’s head appeared, about 40 feet above me.

“WHAT’S UP?”

“MY SHIRT’S CAUGHT IN THE 8! I CAN’T MOVE!”

Scott immediately had a great laugh at my plight, something I might have found rather hilarious myself under other circumstances. Now it just made me angry, and a stream of profanity echoed off the distant quarry walls so that Scott could hear it all twice. Soon he realized that his levity needed to give way to some quick thinking.

Our first idea was cutting away the shirt. To this end, Scott attached a knife to a carabiner and slid it down the rope to me without warning. The heavy knife bonked me soundly on the helmet when it arrived, but at least it was in a leather sheath and didn’t perforate me or anything else. Dropping anything over a climber without yelling “ROCK!” (another “universal” call) is a serious breach of procedure, but it could be excused due to the general panic that was in the air.

Gingerly I used the knife to begin cutting away small sections of my T-shirt. It was important to cut the T-shirt and not the rope. Climbing ropes are notoriously easy to damage, and a nick in the wrong place could fatally weaken my only lifeline. Complicating matters was the need to work with one hand, because my braking hand still needed to hold the rope in case it suddenly came free. After a few minutes it became clear this wasn’t going to work, and I relayed this to Scott.

My biggest problem at this point was my weight on the rope. So long as it was under tension, the rope couldn’t be separated from the shirt. Somehow I needed to get some slack into the rope so that I could untangle things. My first thought was to try to somehow anchor myself against the rock, but it just wasn’t possible. I had no pitons, chocks, or other protection with me, nor did the smooth rock offer any purchase in the form of foot- or hand-holds.

Scott suggested using the vehicle. There were some problems with that idea. Scott wouldn’t be able to see when I was approaching the top. Also, the rope would abrade as it was pulled over the sharp edge of the rock, and it might fail.

I’d been hanging in a harness for an hour when my legs began to go to sleep due to restricted circulation. The pain must have inspired some quick thinking. I remembered an old climbing movie I’d seen where a climber had fallen and been stranded at the end of a long rope. He couldn’t be pulled to safety by his injured partner, and he’d had to climb back up the rope. How had he done it? Finally I remembered.

“SCOTT! I NEED SOME PARACHUTE CORD!”

“WHY?”

“PRUSIK KNOT!”

While Scott searched for the thin, incredibly strong nylon cord that has a thousand uses in climbing, I formulated the plan. The Prusik knot, invented in 1931 by avid Austrian climber Dr. Karl Prusik, is simple but ingenious. A small loop of cord is wound twice around the rope and passed through itself, resulting in a knot that can be slid readily up and down until weight is placed upon the loop, whereupon it locks down and grips securely. Two such knots can be used to climb a rope, the climber’s weight being shifted to one knot as the other is slid higher. I would only need one.

A carabiner with a few feet of parachute cord bonked into my head. Annoyed at Scott’s second failure to warn me about falling objects, I screamed “ROCK, DAMMIT!” I could swear he looked up, but this story is about my lack of intelligence, not his.

Carefully, still working one-handed, I tied the cord into a loop using a double fisherman’s knot. I then tied the Prusik knot around the rope above my head and slid it to a height where the loop ended about six inches above my harness carabiner. I then attached a small loop of rope called a tie-in to the Prusik knot’s loop.

Thinking things through one last time, I realized I’d devised a plan with some risks, and I discussed it with Scott. It seemed manageable, and while he watched more or less helplessly, I hooked my foot through the tie-in and stood up on it, transferring my weight to the Prusik knot and raising my harness a few inches. I then released my braking hand, unclipped the figure eight from my harness, and clipped myself into the main loop of the Prusik knot. Relieved, I sat down and began to untangle things.

With some difficulty, I managed to unwind the rope from the figure eight and remove the remains of my T-shirt. Then, using the knife, I cut away the entire front of my shirt so that it would not get caught again. Examining the rope and the shirt revealed that they’d rubbed together sufficiently to generate some heat, but the rope didn’t seem severely damaged. It would hold. Carefully I re-threaded the device. At the appropriate time, I once again stood up in the longer loop, unclipped my harness from the Prusik knot, and reattached the figure eight. Then, carefully holding myself still with my braking hand, I worked the Prusik knot loose and removed it from the rope. At long last, I slid smoothly down the remaining 60 feet of rope and landed heavily on my posterior, my blood-starved legs too weak to hold my weight.

The memory of a film I’d seen years earlier had saved me, but my own stupidity had landed me in the situation to begin with. I have my own opinion as to what this says about my intelligence, and I invite you to form your own. The phrase “not the sharpest knife in the drawer” does spring to mind. I did pay far more particular attention to my climbing attire thereafter, so at least the day was not without its lesson.