Eyes of the World (What is known)

Eyes of the World as seen from a distance.

I am going to tell you about the Eyes of the World but first I am going to place it in philosophical context. The Eyes of the World was very recently the unknown unknown.  There is a lot of rock that we don’t even know that we don’t know about, the unknown unknown. 

Years ago Donald Rumsfeld was asked what we knew about Iraq’s nuclear and biochemical weapons programs and he said. 

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”

Dylan Miller Cleaning the Eyes. 

Rumsfeld’s dictum sounds a little clumsy until you take it apart. Rumsfeld divides knowledge into groups as an aid to decision making and it’s a good dictum even though Rumsfeld is now known to have made one of the biggest blunders in modern history.  He isn’t wrong when he says, “There are known knowns.”  It's a known known that if you fall off a cliff and you aren’t roped in, you are going to die. The statement, “There are known unknowns,” describes a fair amount of the climbing around Juneau. You know that there’s a cliff on a map on a rock jutting out of the icefield and you know that you don’t know anything else about it. Should you decide to climb it, the decision process is different than some route in guidebook where they tell you the grade, what pro you need, where to place the pro, and how to overcome the crux. This was where Rumsfeld’s dictum went astray. Rumsfeld didn’t mention that there are things we are positive that we know but we are wrong. In both climbing and war, it's the known unknowns that kill you.  The known unknown is that thing you swear on a stack of bibles (or Quorans) is true but isn't true. You aren't going to get 72 virgins in the afterlife for blowing yourself to smithereens along with a busload of infidel commuters.  If Trump tells you the press is fake news, it's wise to check his credibility before you sign up for the marines and invade Iran. Climbers are smarter than military leaders.The only real facts are Darwin's. If you don't double check your knots, you win a Darwin award.

In climbing we stay safer through redundancy because we know that we might be wrong about what we are positive know.  If you know your anchor is bomber but you are wrong, you know you're going to be fine but you are not going to be fine unless a backup anchor.  Unfortunately, they don't use redundancy in war often enough. Rumsfeld was positive there were chemical weapons in Iraq but his mistake killed thousands of  US soldiers when the soldiers were ordered to invade the wrong country, kill the wrong dictator, and murder a million people. 

Climbing is less dangerous than war. In climbing the unknown unknowns can be dangerous but they can also be a ton of fun.

Three years ago I wrote a post called Climbing Development and it did not include anything about the Garden of Rocks or the Eyes of the World and this wasn’t in intentional omission. These places weren’t on the map, they had not been visited, or even considered as climbing destinations. There are rocks in the woods and beaches around Juneau that climbers have never considered climbing and don’t even know that there is something there to consider. 

Top of the Eyes. photo Adam Moser

The Eyes of the World is so named because the view from the top is phenomenal. The top of the cliff is about 1,050 feet above sea level and at this writing there isn’t a trail to the bottom of the cliff but there is a brushy trail to the top.  What is known is that so far local climbers have developed three bolted routes and there is more to develop. The rock is solid but I still don’t know what the rock type is. It’s the same rock type as the Tee Harbor boulders. Indeed this cliff is a thousand feet above the Tee Harbor boulders and it appears the boulders fell off the cliff some time in the past.  you can hike to the top of the cliff in about 45 minutes. The climb the bolted routes you have to rappel off the cliff and climb back up. There are three anchor points about 25 meters down the wall at the base of each climb. I think a 50 meter rope is too short to reach them if doubled up. There are yet many climbs to be developed. It is known that there are unknowns. That and it’s tough to follow the trail if you haven’t been there before. The beginning of the trail, in particular, seems like a needle in a haystack or more accurately, a strand of boot worn ground in a vast temperate rain forest. Right now the trail starts 100 yards from the parking lot and you have to bushwhack to the start. It seems that if you are going to get lost, it’s better to get lost before you lose sight of the parking lot.

Perhaps, it would be good to make some of the unknowns a little more known.

Bolted routes on The Eyes of the World, 2019