Alan Douglas rock climbs without a rope as a constant reminder of how precious life is. This is his story – one of loss, depression and finding his faith again, like the Phoenix.
This is the other side of a story I told weeks ago about the passing of Ginger, the Squamish climbing community’s best known climbing canine. Douglas was Ginger’s partner in life, her most devoted friend and “King Can Al” to this same climbing community.
To all of us who live and climb in Squamish regularly the name King Can Al is synonymous with the crag Burger’s And Fries and the unstoppable need to be out climbing on rock to maintain balance.
I don’t mean physical balance either but mental balance, psychological balance, earthly balance. A desperate balance.
It was the early ’90s and Douglas worked head down in an office job pursuing an ever growing salary and the dreams of success in Toronto. Stress was taking it’s toll and to cope he matched his career ambitions with a drink more and more often.
Douglas was a climber at heart and began dabbling in soloing at an area called Kelso, moving away from the judgemental eyes of the crowds at Rattlesnake Point and their disapproving comments.
In 1993 he heard about Squamish and began coming out once a year, hiring local guide Jim Sandford to take him up routes on the Chief and teach him skills and techniques. It was his breath of fresh air.
The first blow came in the late ’90s with the loss of his best friend in life, his brother, to amyloidosis.
A rare condition that affects the heart, it has a genetic component and Douglas was told his chances of acquiring it were very high, somewhere around 50 per cent. The news cemented a decision he has never rescinded upon, to climb without a rope.
Douglas returned from Squamish realizing that it was either he died behind the screen of his computer in Toronto or he had to make a drastic life change. He erred on the side of climbing and Squamish and left Ontario forever.
Once a Squamish local, he began soloing in earnest, believing his chances at a long life where over. He was spiraling downwards.
Then, on his 49th birthday he was tested for Amyloidosis and discovered he was not predisposed to the condition. He was elated, realizing he still had a bright future ahead.
Yet the rollercoaster was in full swing; the high was not to last.
Walking to work in Squamish, he began having heart problems and by day’s end he was in the ER at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.
One and half months later he walked out of the hospital with stents in his heart, a looming sense of dread over his fragile sense of mortality and the anger of someone whose body had been given to science. Now the soloing began to take on a new role, one of distraction from the gripping depression that now clawed at him.
He began amassing hundreds of pitches, 200 in the first 10 days post-surgery, and with each heart checkup his doctor grew more and more exasperated with his unwillingness to cease the climbing.
It crescendoed with 500 pitches in 20 days post op and a yelling match with his doctor. A yelling match which, combined with the elegant distraction provided by the soloing, ended his depression. He needed to climb to live, even if it killed him.
This precipitous year after heart surgery ended with 3,556 pitches of solo climbing and a stable lease on life.
However, the rollercoaster entered a curve and plunged. No sooner had he found something that gave a fleeting vision of temporary hope when he learned his heart was only at 40 per cent capacity.
This came as a blow because he had recently met someone special, someone who had made him seriously consider his future more carefully. The “happily ever after” he so badly wanted slipped out of reach.
As he spiraled into depression again he stopped eating and the soloing increased in frequency. Last year saw Douglas survive several serious falls soloing. Incredibly, he came back from each one. Yet he was dropping weight and the thoughts of ending his life were creeping into his climbing.
As I finish listening, he pauses for a long time. It’s 2017. His dog, Ginger, has passed away. He is still here and he is still climbing.
I ask him how he has survived. “Right at the end I found my faith,” he says.
This happened right after Ginger passed away, like she was his talisman the whole time. While not a practicing Christian, he counts a newfound faith in himself, in the world, in a God as helping him see some simple happiness in his days in Squamish on its rocks.
Douglas also said his friends were instrumental in helping him see why moving forward was the only thing to do. He still solos constantly and maintains that it’s a terribly stupid and dangerous thing to do, a choice he thinks no one should really make. We finish our chat on an up note and he seems relieved to have talked.
“Don’t let your setbacks define you,” he urges. “Why climb without a rope? Beats sitting at home worrying about a bum heart.”
