The 3 Types of Fun
As every outdoor adventurer knows, you can have three kinds of fun on any given day outside. Sometimes it's planned, and sometimes a plan morphs into another kind of fun (for better or worse.) I didn't fully understand this concept myself until I was thrown into multi-pitch climbing for essentially the first time at Red Rock Canyon just outside of Vegas. It was May, prime time for scorching hot sandstone climbing if you don't make your send time strategic. As you can probably guess, we didn't make the time we had hoped for. Although we were in the park early enough, we decided to take an easy morning because, as I was told, "We'll sail those first few pitches and you'll do great. There will be plenty of time to finish the full route." Boy, were we wrong. What originally was thought to be a type one fun kind of day tuned into type two, maybe even type three depending on who you ask. Let's talk more about it.Type 1 Fun
Type 1 fun is pretty straightforward. You're having fun during the activity, and everyone can agree that afterward, you also had fun. There's no question, there was no suffering or misery, it was just wholesome, simple fun. Examples of this could be a relaxing boulder session or a successful day teaching your buddy how to ski. There were probably a lot of laughs and everyone was probably in agreeance that they'd go do whatever activity it was again.Type 2 Fun
This is where things get spicy. Type 2 fun might have moments where it feels like type 1 fun, but it's generally categorized by misery and pain only to later be seen as a good time. Type 2 fun feels hard and not worth it in the moment but ends up being great. Any running distance for the average human over 10k, the trek into the backcountry for skiing, or a thru-hike can also be type 2 fun. To take it back to my earlier example, what should have been a type 1 fun climb ended up being type 2 because 1. We got off route 2. We were running out of daylight by the end and were not prepared to climb in the dark. 3. I was sacred and definitely cried (being that it was maybe my 3rd time trad climbing ever let alone being hundreds of feet in the air) 4. We got lost on the two-mile walk back from the crag at night, bonked, and ran into a wild burro. All really fun to look back on two days later, but at the moment, it was awful.Type 3 Fun
It's tough to say if it should even be called fun at this point but here we go. Type 3 fun is pretty sketchy. Type 3 fun is something that you might look back on and tell yourself you can't believe you did that, you'll actually never do that again, thank god you made it out alive! Sometimes, you might know this going into the activity. Was it the safest or easiest adventure option? No, but you did it for the plot. This could be any sort of free solo (cough cough Alex Honnold), an alpine expedition, or maybe something type 1 tuned into type 3 after a terrible mischance with weather or ill-prepared folks in your party.Regardless of what you get yourself, being prepared is your best bet. You never know when Type 1 will turn into Type 3, and if it happens vice versa, well, you're lucky! Have fun out there, stay safe, we'll catch you on the mountain.