Were We Lucky, or Were We Good?
Jul 1, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
Episode 8 - The Costs, and Gifts, of Outdoor Incidents **Guest**: Tracy Rekart Tracy Rekart shares a powerful story of a climbing incident, lessons learned about…
Tracy RekartGuest
Steve SmithHost
Thank you for just being so open and vulnerable and clear in your ability to tell what is obviously a very difficult story, even many years later.
So one thing that we try to do is acknowledge the mistakes, but also to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are having that experience, right? And it's really easy to cherry pick mistakes and errors in hindsight.
And I think a more useful question is, how did those things make sense at the time? And how did we find ourselves in a situation where that could happen? And what can we learn from it? So it's not Really just looking at it as mistakes as much as it is.
You know, like I said, when i was i'm the rock climber he's a mountain climber i chose that day he's already stressed out he already feels like he said on the way to the climb something's got to give and so i was like okay he needs a break from any more tension and uh and so i chose to not add more tension was my initial i don't want to get in a fight i don't want to get in a controversy, I just want to have an enjoyable day where we just enjoy each other's company.
Figured because we climbed it four times, he saw that it wasn't a bi-wave rope.
that like were part of my protocol for how I climbed, but I didn't say them out loud to him.
And knowing that he was so distracted with all of the stuff something's got to give that, uh, I would have been, yeah, I wish I was tended him differently
Thank you for just being so open and vulnerable and clear in your ability to tell what is obviously a very difficult story, even many years later.
So one thing that we try to do is acknowledge the mistakes, but also to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are having that experience, right? And it's really easy to cherry pick mistakes and errors in hindsight.
And I think a more useful question is, how did those things make sense at the time? And how did we find ourselves in a situation where that could happen? And what can we learn from it? So it's not Really just looking at it as mistakes as much as it is.
You know, like I said, when i was i'm the rock climber he's a mountain climber i chose that day he's already stressed out he already feels like he said on the way to the climb something's got to give and so i was like okay he needs a break from any more tension and uh and so i chose to not add more tension was my initial i don't want to get in a fight i don't want to get in a controversy, I just want to have an enjoyable day where we just enjoy each other's company.
Figured because we climbed it four times, he saw that it wasn't a bi-wave rope.
that like were part of my protocol for how I climbed, but I didn't say them out loud to him.
And knowing that he was so distracted with all of the stuff something's got to give that, uh, I would have been, yeah, I wish I was tended him differently
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