2017 Year in Review

[lizolas]

Climbing (etc.) 2017 – But We Were Having Fun the Whole Time!

A year ago, I would have thought that I’d be sitting here, a more confident trad leader, with a number of 5.7s and even some 5.8s under my belt. Instead, I’m now unconvinced that I can even lead 5.6, and I’ve gotten in under a dozen climbs this entire year. I’ve summited only two “real” peaks out of 8 attempted and dozens more intended. I’ve led a measly 5 6 trad climbs, two 12 sport climbs, and a lot of toprope falling. I had a chunk of prime climbing season removed from my schedule while I had to replace my vehicle and then replace my climbing partners. But I learned a lot, and I was having fun (almost) the whole time.

Sunset over Mono Lake

Peaks Attempted

1. Round Top – February 2017
   What seems from online descriptions to be an unimposing, doable dayhike in the summer turns out to have insurmountable winds on it in the winter. As one of two beginners on the trip, my first experience using crampons and an axe (actually an ice tool) left me convinced that I’d wasted a relatively large amount of money on gear I would never use again because I just wasn’t cut out for mountaineering. I got a cool toprope ice climbing picture though.

Round Top

This makes people think I’m adventurous

2. Olancha Peak – July 2017
   The lesson here is that mere mortals should see Bob Burd’s trip report timelines as some demi-godly level to which to aspire – not a reasonable estimate for anyone unaccustomed to high-elevation travel over uneven terrain. Here was where I failed both at not being afraid and at wanting to go up more than I wanted to go down. I was miserable. I was still acclimating to exertion at altitude, and in the blazing sun I couldn’t find a comfortable pace. I was moving far too slowly given my late start to actually be making reasonable time on a 20+ mile hike. About an hour and a half in, I turned around. Without having actually heard the quote yet, I knew I wanted to go down more than I wanted to go up, and it wasn’t going to work to try to push myself.


3. Mt Whitney – July 2017
   Having bailed on my Olancha attempt the day before (begun late due to picking up the Whitney permit at close to 10:30 am), I made a reasonable effort at acclimating and resting for Whitney. Nothing else about the attempt was reasonable. In hindsight, attempting my first 14er with no training, 2 days’ notice, and nothing much over 10,000’ under my belt previously was a terrible idea. But I was safe the whole time, and although I was hardly having fun any of the time, even on the way down, it was that trip that gave me a sense of what wanting to go up more than you want to go down feels like. At the time, I felt like the most pathetic climber on the mountain. Everyone was passing me. I was the last person to summit that day unless anymore JMTers trickled in later in the evening. 19 hours car-to-car seemed like an embarrassingly slow time for a 22-mile hike. I was indeed slow, but I was also determined to finish, even without any training or experience in similar terrain. I climbed the highest point in the lower 48 states by myself in a day. I wanted to turn around the whole time. I felt awful, but I did it, and I learned to push through mental barriers I never thought I’d conquer. I also finally got around to using my ice axe, and found that my second time using mountaineering gear went substantially better than the first. I still felt slow, but without 50 mph winds stopping me from even moving forward, it didn’t feel hopeless.

Hardest thing I’ve ever done

4. Mt Dana – July 2017
   Again unsure of a reasonable speed goal, I assumed I’d be able to complete the 5-mile round trip – over half of it on a trail – in well under 3 hours. Again, I was wrong and got to learn about traveling on talus at high elevation. Starting somewhat acclimated from having slept and spent the previous day in Lee Vining, I still found myself very out of breath very quickly on the trail. The first mile and a half took almost an hour, and the last mile to the summit took over an hour. Stops to put on crampons for crossing snow added to the time, but I think one of the main lessons here is simply that moving on real mountains has no easy conversion factor from sea-level class 1 trail hiking speed. The summit did feel like an accomplishment, although having already checked Whitney off the list as my second 10,000’+ summit, I’ve missed the opportunity to get another “next highest peak” unless I get a hell of a lot better at mountaineering and start climbing in Alaska.

This was a cakewalk compared to Whitney (or maybe a cookie walk, since this was when I discovered Oreos make good hiking food)

5. Matthes Crest – July 2017
   After a miserably failed attempt to plan a Half Dome hiking trip with some extra climbing, I aborted that mission and went to attempt Matthes Crest with Joshua and Josiah. From their confidence, especially Josiah’s initial desire to do the Tenaya-Matthes-Cathedral linkup, I thought I was going to be getting in way over my head and slowing the group down the whole time. As it turned out, we were all in way over our heads. We didn’t even get one of the two Matthes summits, but I learned a lot about having fun the whole time, sunsets in the Sierra, eating enough while moving, and speaking up when you don’t think something is safe.

Sunset over Echo Peaks

6. Mt Shasta – August 2017
   With Brad’s encouragement, I tried Shasta via the Clear Creek route fairly late in the season. I expected it to take longer than anticipated, but failed to anticipate how long that would be. I also got scared of getting lost and/or running into bears in the dark, and pushed my intended midnight start time back to 2 am when I didn’t get to bed until 10, and then 2 am got pushed back to 4 am as I dawdled, not really wanting to set out alone for hours of walking in the dark. Due to a lack of other climbers on that part of the mountain, I chose to stick firmly to my 1 pm turn around time, and stopped about 900 vertical feet short of the summit – a point from which it had taken even Brad 2-3 more hours to summit – and turned back. At first I was upset with myself. This should have been easy. This should have been a hike. Except it’s not a hike just because you’re walking (not climbing). Sliding back down scree slopes is not a casual hike, and by the time I’d gotten back to the trail, I had decided to come back sometime and get an earlier start. And maybe a better vehicle. Earlier in the season, I think Avalanche Gulch might be a more enjoyable kind of miserable, and given the crowds might also be a more Whitney-type experience for doing it alone without ever really feeling stranded by yourself on a mountain.
   
   • Brokeoff Mountain – August 2017
     On the way to Shasta, I stopped at Lassen National Park to do some acclimation hikes. While it was originally my plan to do Shasta first, then swing by Lassen on the way home, an overnight stop forced me to reverse the order, and I think that ended up being the better way to do it anyway. Acclimation seemed to work better with moderate activity, rather than just sitting around at a trailhead for a few hours before starting to climb. Brokeoff is a county high point, though only 9,200’, so it was on my list to summit. A relatively gentle hike, it also has much more pleasant scenery than the barren rocky landscape of Lassen Peak.
   
   
   • Lassen Peak – August 2017
     After doing Brokeoff in the morning, I ate and headed over to the Lassen Peak trailhead (which is about 2000 feet higher than the Shasta trailhead anyway, so I figured the more time spent there the better). I completed the 2.5 mile hike up in an hour and 3 minutes, and on the way down hiked with someone I’d met at the summit. Lassen was my first peak over 10,000 feet almost exactly a year earlier in August 2016.
   
   Lassen Summit
   
7. Bear Creek Spire – September 2017
   Wrapping up the summer season with one more failed summit, Joshua, Josiah, and I went to try to climb Bear Creek Spire as a 3-day trip. I learned several things. I need a better, larger pack; I need to learn to eat more; I need to figure out a warmer sleeping setup; and there are some guys out there whose egos aren’t too fragile to take input from a woman. Ideally, we would have had a plan the night before, and had everything packed and ready to go in the morning. I think Joshua and I were still kind of looking to Josiah to be in charge, so when he started feeling sick and wanted to go to bed, neither of us did anything about preparations. Getting up to 13,000 feet was still an accomplishment for the next day, though, and we got more experience moving over talus. I found out I much prefer my hands to hiking poles, and also that hiking pole baskets are too easy to lose.


8. Alta Peak - November 2017
   Adding yet another “I know things about goats” to the list, an OkCupid 3rd date (or maybe not even a date at that point) wanted to plan a weekend trip. From what I could see in weather forecasts, everything in the Sierras above 7 or 8000’ was going to get at least a couple feet of snow, with generally more snow the farther north and higher elevation you went. He disregarded my concern that maybe we should backpack in hopefully snowless Yosemite Valley, which I took to mean he’d found some forecast or conditions report that indicated that Alta Peak was a doable objective as a hike. Instead I think it meant optimism/ignorance about the conditions. We made it up to about 9,500’ before turning back due to impassable terrain for running/approach shoes. I did finally figure out how to stay warm at night while backpacking in mid-20s weather, though, and the hike was fun except for all the slipping and falling.

Outdoor Technical Climbing

The year started out (or close enough) with a December 27 trip to Pinnacles with Brad. We each led 2 pitches of Costanoan - with me taking the “hardest”, most runout 1st pitch (5.4) - and got to the top with no problem. Then we went to Machete Ridge where he led Corona (5.6), and then I backed off the 5.8R Dos Equis at the “R” part, a committed move to hopefully a hold above a rounded bulge.

This year I also learned how to wear my helmet straight

I wish I could report that I’d done so much climbing I couldn’t recall all the trips I’d been on, but I think it was more that what I did was toprope cragging (and not going on that many trips), so I didn’t climb much of anything worth keeping track of. A trip to Lover’s Leap with Ryan and Jen early in the summer, supposedly to get some easy trad experience, turned out to be me leading only the first pitch of Ham and Cheese (5.6 Sport), and Ryan trying to lead Arctic Breeze (5.10a Sport) but backing off slightly above the first bolt and deciding it was above his level.

Leading the first pitch (the only bolted pitch) of Ham and Cheese


Everyone on the ground: “Ok there’s a great kneebar there!”
Me: *climbs into a hole and sits in it*

A humbling trip to Yosemite with Ryan at the beginning of September left me laughing at the idea that I could be leading 5.8 by the end of this year. Maybe if I’d continued climbing with Henrique I could have (and maybe outside of Yosemite, I could have), but not at the rate I was going. I led Guide Crack 4 (5.5 trad) with little trouble, but neither of us could lead the adjacent 5.7 Guide Crack 3. Ryan also tried and backed off of Guide Crack 1 or 2, 5.8. Had we treated the beginning of GC3 as a boulder problem and not tried to place anything until the stance got better 15-20’ up, it might have worked, but if you fall outside, you fall in real life.

Tenaya Peak the next day didn’t go much better, although I (possibly biased) maintain that it was more Ryan who delayed us than me. I wasn’t taking 20 minutes to build jive-ass anchors. Overall, the lack of simulclimbing was probably the biggest delay. To his credit, he led the harder pitches after the thunder started, when I freaked out and wanted to bail, but there was no good way to bail with the gear we’d brought without leaving most of our rack there, if we’d even been able to get to subsequent gear placements on one rope. What’s supposed to be a 4-6 hour car-to-car simulclimb ended up being a 13 hour car-to-car adventure that was nowhere near over at the summit, since we disagreed on a descent route the entire way down. I think he thought I was lost most of the time because when I described the descent as a “walkoff,” what I meant was “we don’t have to rappel,” but he was expecting a distinct trail like the approach.

Efficiency-wise, things didn’t improve much the next day, but I did lead the crux pitch on Holdless Horror (5.6) the next day, with his anchor built right into all the good holds at the crux, and him sitting on the best starting foot stance, so I felt some sense of accomplishment being able to come back and lead the hardest parts of what I’d tentatively followed on my first trad lead (the 5.2-ish first pitch) last summer.

That trip left me feeling discouraged about my ability both as a climber and as a climbing partner. Upon further consideration, I think it was less about my climbing ability or competence as a partner and more about the fact that I wasn’t his new girlfriend I had the feeling he’d rather have been spending the weekend with. I still feel somewhat hesitant about being the person in charge on a trip, but I also know that most of the people I go on trips with do contribute to planning and decision making.

A final climbing trip on the last weekend before campgrounds closed for the winter in Tahoe had only one trad lead each day. Saturday we each led Casual Observer, a 5.2 chimney that supposedly gets up to 5.5 after the chimney, but seemed more like 4th class there. Then we toproped some stuff because it’s the 90-foot wall, so why not? I fell once and hung once on Strontium 90, a 5.8 crack that from the ground I’d thought I might be able to lead (definitely not), and flailed a little but actually got above the crux finger crack section before my first fall on Fallout, 5.9. I also toproped Holdless Horror, but that was only 5.6 and I should have led it. There were lots of awkward, large moves that scared me away from leading it, but in every case I remember, the awkward move was quickly followed by a really solid stance to place something. Sunday we went to Hogsback and Jen led the first pitch of Knapsack Crack, 5,5, then I led the second with the crux and an enormous runout on the second half of the pitch. No placements seemed great but the rock was so low-angle I just kept moving, trying to conserve my gear because I thought it continued a lot farther than it did.

Don’t forget your anchor, kids!

5 6 trad leads this entire year. What a miserable season. I wish I had some optimistic outlook for the future, but my ability to get climbing practice is entirely dependent on the availability of partners, and so far I haven’t found any who want to get in a large volume of 5.5-5.7 trad climbing in for practice who don’t already have partners they climb with regularly. The obvious answer is “find more partners” but unlike the the people who often tell me that, I don’t just meet dozens of experienced trad climbers at the gym.

Despite that, I think all hope is not lost. For next year, I have a goal of leading or sharing leads on 28 new (to me) trad or and 28 sport routes 5.5 or above and 5.7 or above, respectively, before my 28th birthday. Hopefully more trad than sport, but might as well count any leads, right? Although it wasn’t evident in the climbing times on the trips I took with other relative beginners - compared to last year climbing with Henrique’s meticulous, efficient transitions that made up for my slow speed - this summer I felt much, much more confident placing gear and building anchors, as well as moving a substantial distance between pieces rather than sewing up even easy terrain. Nuts aren’t scary and uncertain anymore. I felt like I actually knew what I was doing, and will continue to improve given more practice. 2-3 nearby routes with 3 or 4 pitches shouldn’t be too undoable in a day with a competent partner, and there are even several crags with multiple 5.5-5.8 single-pitch trad routes. I still have to find said partner(s) but I’ve got all winter to figure that out. Maybe with an explicit goal to meet, I'll be more proactive about trying to plan trips with people. Maybe I’ll even learn to take falls on gear. I still have to learn to want to do it intentionally to push limits, but in the last week of the year I did end up taking a surprise fall on gear.

*Ninja Edit*
I wrote this entry before I had any intention of logging thoughts in a blog of some sort, well before the actual end of 2017. I had thought that the Tahoe trip in October marked the end of any real climbing for me for this year, and I’d have to wait until next late spring or summer to get more trips in. Despite the fact that the first time I went climbing outside after joining the gym was in February (2016), I still think that climbing season is like May-October for the entire state except way farther south. As it turned out, I did get a bit more climbing in before the year ended.

I signed up for a Meetup trip to Owens River Gorge in December, and ended up being the only one besides the organizer who stayed signed up. This meant that we got to do a lot of climbing, as the approach and “descent” from the gym-like sport crags there are negligible, and we didn’t have to take turns with a whole group spending more time socializing than climbing. I led 10 climbs that weekend: two 5.7s, three 5.8s, four 5.9s, and my first outdoor 5.10a! (The first of the 5.9s I led was also my first outdoor 5.9, but it came after the 5.10a on my first day there.) It would have been nice to push myself to take more lead falls outside, but the main day we had planned for falling, Saturday, it got really cold really fast, and we ended up retreating to the car around 3. I’m glad I got so much practice staying calm while farther above a bolt on positive, ledge-y terrain than I’d have liked, and got to work on just going for it and trying moves on holds that didn’t feel great, because almost every single one of them worked just fine.

At the very end of 2017, I went on another climbing trip with Brad, this time to Yosemite. He’d never been there before and it’s at least not terribly out of the way to pick him up from San Ramon on the way there. I even managed to get a campsite in the Valley. The first day we did After Six, and halfway up P1 I took my first fall on gear - a nut in a mostly horizontal crack that I didn’t even expect to stay in place very well. We then took a small break and switched. Brad managed to send it, but said it was the hardest lead he’d ever done. And that was “only” 5.7, which I thought I should be able to do just fine. The remaining pitches were much easier, although we got a little stuck on the last one when I couldn’t convince myself to go up an easy but unprotectable slab to the top. The next day the original plan had been to do Munginella, but after Brad expressed interest in climbing a straightforward crack, we decided to try Jamcrack. We tried to try, but failed to actually locate the correct approach and went hiking instead. Apparently I’ve still got quite a ways to go to being a competent climber in Yosemite.

Thank you, nut.

Indoor Climbing

I got lead certified in the gym at the end of September 2016, several months after I’d been leading outside. At first I was hesitant to try anything over 10b. In October 2016 I toprope “projected” a 5.11d and somewhat regularly sent/onsighted mid-11s, but when leading I felt like anything above mid-10s was entirely out of my reach. At some point during this year, I started being willing to push myself. At first that meant going up a route that was too hard to flash/onsight, and taking when I got tired. In the later part of this year, it’s become a willingness - still a work in progress, but overall improving - to try things I’m scared of, keep pushing myself until I fall, and get on routes I think I have no chance of making all the moves on. This has led to repeatedly surprising myself by being able to hold onto something or make a move that I thought I had no chance at, which is helpful in the gym as well as outside.

I still make first hard lead attempts by cheat clipping, high clipping, and taking, a lot of the time. But then rather than deciding I’ve done my flailing for the day and never coming back to them, I continue to work on figuring out beta and clipping from the on-route holds. Again, this is still a work in progress. It feels like it’s only been in the month of November that I learned to project. Those two projects were my first 5.11d lead and my first 5.12a toprope. I’d previously kind of projected a 5.12a on lead, but didn’t send it. I ended up with one or two hangs before it got taken down. That was the first hard route I’d returned to consistently, but I didn’t wholeheartedly throw myself at repeated attempts to really get the beta down and figure out a reliable way through the crux. I put off starting my attempts on it until just a couple weeks before it got taken down, too.

First 5.11d send on lead

The 11d project was another one I waited longer than I should have to start. I’d tried it within a couple weeks of it getting put up - Joshua sandbagged me into leading it before realizing he’d toproped it and been glad he wasn’t leading it - but got frustrated after repeated futile attempts to figure out a reliable move over the stalactite roof. The first time I tried it, I’d somehow gotten over after just a few falls so I knew it was possible for me, but I couldn’t remember the beta I’d used. It made a good project, because I was never afraid to start it. “But what if I fall before the first or second bolt?” stops me from attempting a lot of harder climbs. I could get to at least the 4th clip without falling every time I tried it, and from there the falls are good. One Saturday when I felt like doing a lot of falling, I came back to it to figure out the roof move. It turned out that I was heel hooking where that wasn’t the proper direction in which to apply pressure with that foot. Once I had that idea solidly in my head, I never missed the roof move again; after that all my falls were above the crux, from being too pumped from my entire life of climbing. The first time I got back on a project in a session, I got on it not two, but three whole times. I finally understood what Salman always says about the first attempt being a practice run, and the second being the best attempt.

For several sessions I made 3 attempts on it. Usually the first was kind of re-familiarizing myself with the route, the second felt the most controlled, and then the third I might figure out promising beta, but I was always too tired to get a new high point. I thought I was going to have the same experience of a project getting taken down right as I was on the brink of sending it. Most of the Constant Wall was being reset on a Thursday morning after a Wednesday session where I’d gotten to the last hold and failed to grab it and move up. The far right side stayed, though, and Joshua said he’d belay me after his TBF class that day. I did some warm-up bouldering while I waited, then one warm up lead. The first attempt, I predictably fell near the top trying to figure out the best body position on all those crimps and footholds. I rested for 15-20 minutes, then tried again and sent it, mostly. I grabbed the top before clipping the last draw, and apparently my foot was on a yellow hold after I grabbed the top, but I consider that close enough.

For the 5.12a toprope project, I started it the first day I saw it, and continued to work on it nearly every session after that. It was definitely selected for being my style of climbing, and maybe a bit soft. I tend to think that most mostly-vertical crimpfests are soft, though, because that’s my favorite kind of climbing. This one was actually on the steepest section of the crack wall, but because of the opportunities lower down for stemming, and in the middle for using holds on multiple faces of the wall, it didn’t feel so strenuously overhung.

The first time I tried it, I made it nearly halfway without falling, then fell 3 or 4 times after that. The second time was a similar story, although I got a bit higher because I was able to just barely control the barn door that had caused the first fall on the previous attempt. Eventually, I worked out that beta to include a knee bar between a jug and the wall, for stability to get into position. Then rather than moving both hands up and pulling, I moved only the left hand up, and stabilized myself on a foothold using my right hand, until I’d moved my hips around the corner. After that, I don’t think I ever fell on that move, and all that was left was to figure out how to get to the top efficiently enough to not fall from failure to hold on. At one point, I thought I’d worked out a technically proficient move involving a step through to an outside edge, then a diagonal reach for a jug-crimp. After realizing that that was more of a deadpoint that failed more often than it succeeded, I considered the possibility that this might be one of those cases that called for more Kermit. The next time I tried it, I got to that jug in a much more controlled fashion, and fell due to pump rather than inefficient movement. The following session - November 29th, just before my stated goal of sending it by my birthday - I sent it on the first try, and it felt easy and perfectly controlled most of the way. I’d figured out (Salman had pointed out) an opportunity for a rest right before the final sequence of good holds that I was always too pumped to hold onto, and on that attempt it felt like starting up some low 11.

Another general work-in-progress accomplishment is the realization that a lot of things are much better to work on on lead rather than toprope. Before Ropes 56 & 57 at the gym got taken down, I’d tried a couple routes there and intended to work on the beta on toprope, then consider leading them. Instead what happens is the huge swings make it impossible to get back to the wall, especially if there are no jugs nearby, and it ends up being way more exertion than it’s worth to work on the moves. I started being more willing to just try something that seemed impossible, knowing that falling was ok, and/or there were other holds around I could use to clip if I really had to.

At the beginning of 2017, I didn’t make any real, self-improvement resolutions, but I did set a few gym goals to work on:

• Do a bodyweight pull-up
  I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished the proficiency I’d like, but I did complete this. Intending to prove to Eric that I was nowhere near being able to do a pull-up yet, I went over to a bar and proceeded to do a perfectly controlled, good-form pull-up. Eventually I’d like to feel like even after a climbing session, I can walk over to the bars and *know* that I’ll be able to do at least a couple pull ups, but for now this is a significant improvement over needing nearly half my bodyweight in assistance for a 1 rep max when I started out.
• Onsight 5.11d
  The onsight goals actually ended up feeling the least exciting when they happened; they also happened in the same night. I picked a purple 5.11d where all the holds were the same kind of really good crimps. It was on the same portion of the wall that my first 10d send/onsight had been a year before. It had been up for a while and I’d been putting off attempting it because I had the idea that if ever there was a 5.11d I could onsight, it was that one. I eventually tried it to meet a goal of onsighting one before the end of October (my 2-year PG-versary) and it felt absolutely effortless the entire way up. It involved a whole lot of Kermit, but with the relatively gentle overhang my hips can be closer in to the wall that way than if I try to turn one hip in and use outside edges. The reason this felt like such an underwhelming accomplishment to me was that I’ve started focusing on actually figuring out beta, thinking about movements, and being efficient. This climb was just a wall plastered with similar holds, none spaced too far apart. “Hold crimps; go up.” There was no unusual beta to read, no risk whatsoever of getting got. I recall a few moves where I thought a little bit about which hold would be most efficient to move to or the nicest to grab, but there was no spot where I had to actually think about what would be possible and what wouldn’t.
  On the same night I sent this, I had worked for a while on a toprope 5.11b on the 3-roof wall in the Icebox. The start was enormous, burly bouldering type moves that are not at all my style. I didn’t send it due to a foot slip in a stupid place at the top where I wasn’t paying attention because the hard part was over, but I was still more proud of the work I did on the 11b than I was of my 11d onsight.

First 5.11d onsight
• Send 5.12a
  While I’d like to lead 5.12a in the near future, the toprope 5.12a does fulfill this goal. When I wrote these, I don’t think I would have imagined I’d even be trying leading 12s within the year, much less have any chance at success of them. This one felt like an accomplishment because I’d actually put work into figuring out the beta. It was more straightforward than the 11d lead project, but still required some thought, and some revisions to what I thought I’d figured out was the most efficient way. What I noticed after I sent this, as Brett asked me to walk him through the beta on it, was that my beta included the feet. I’ve gotten good at knowing where my hands go, and it’s usually the feet that get me into trouble. No more “and then the feet come up somewhere” on this. I knew exactly where the feet moved to and when.

First 5.12a send
• Onsight V4
  After I onsighted the 5.11d, I decided to go try a V4 on the beginner wall that Joshua had told me was “hold crimps, go up.” That one didn’t work, because at the very end it turned out it was “hold crimps, traverse around a corner.” There was an adjacent V4 that I onsighted with no problem, though. Beginner wall sends always feel like the grades are debatable. I counted those, but also felt more accomplished a while later when I sent two Zee V4 climbs in a different area. They were also “hold crimps, go up” but required some thought about body positioning and technique and had much smaller holds.

First V4 send in the beginner area
• Send V5
  Again I first sent a V5 in the beginner area, and it felt both like it was a little soft and like I cheated a little by skipping the crux move due to my height. In general I’d say that still counts, but on a route that’s only 3 moves long, it didn’t seem like the intention of the goal had been met.
  I nearly managed a V5 flash on another route, but because I was expecting the whole climb to be impossible, I did not whole-ass the starting move the first time, and fell off. Steve told me he thought I could do it on the basis of “I’ve seen what you climb.” What he’d seen was me flailing up to the 2nd clip on one of Joshua’s 12c projects - not actually climbing at the same level Joshua does. But the V5 route did end up being completely doable, if large, moves on slopers and slopey jugs.
• Headstand on a Bosu Ball
  Make stupid goals, get stupid results. Instead I’ve been working on handstands (sometimes away from the wall, sometimes against the wall) and those have been getting noticeably more controlled.

Salman and I have discussed how we don’t think “onsight grade” is a very good measure of climbing skill much above 11a. After that it’s so easy to miss a single move that ruins an onsight of a route, but a climber who can one-hang a 5.11d obviously has something more figured out about technique and strength than someone who toprope flashes 5.10d consistently but can’t send any harder. I still occasionally fall toproping 5.10d. But now I’d also try leading 5.10d with the expectation that I’d likely be able to send it, not that I’d be terrified and have to take several times. Pushing the grade I can claim to consistently onsight doesn’t seem like a good goal anymore, because I’ve vastly improved my climbing in the past year, but I still consider my usual onsight grade to be 5.10c/d. I think I would probably be projecting high 12s (particularly well-suited to me) before I could expect to walk up to almost any low 11 in the gym and confidently think “Yeah, I can flash this.” As evidenced by my one-hang ruined onsight attempts of two 5.11c routes in the month of November and an 11b onsight that I started thinking it was 10d, I think it would be a beneficial goal to stop starting up high 11s with the assumption that I’ll do badly on the first attempt.

This year has been a transition from “girly Pinterest workout” to actual training. Inspired by a video by Jeff Cavaliere, I stopped doing multi-minute planks and moved on to more difficult exercises. Then I began more specifically aiming for 10-20 reps of exercises that took me almost to failure by the end of 3-5 sets, rather than doing a million reps of something that left me only mildly tired at the end. I still like to warm up for core workouts by doing 2 sets of 50 reps of hip dip planks and knees-to-elbows on a Bosu ball, but then after that I do other exercises, like hanging leg raises rather than using the jetpack looking piece of equipment. I had recent realization that my limitation for toes-to-bar was more flexibility - unlike most of the rest of me, my hamstrings do not seem to have benefited at all from regular yoga practice - and not core strength. I started doing as much of a toes-to-bar exercise as I could, with my legs as straight as I could, rather than leaving it at the L-sit shaped leg raises that never felt extremely difficult. Rather than trying to accommodate a multitude of unsolicited mansplained pull-up training routines, I started a routine of one warm up set followed by 3 sets of 5 at a weight that hopefully gradually decreases over time until I can do multiple controlled bodyweight pull ups. For a while I was stuck at 42 lbs due to a phase of ignoring non-climbing workouts, but at least the assistance I need to complete 3x5 didn’t go back up, and I eventually moved down to 36 lbs.

Every facet of my gym training can still use improvement. I need to get on more hard lead routes and fall more than I take; I need to stick to my non-climbing workouts for an extended period of time; I need to get more willing to try clipping off holds that don’t feel secure to me. But I’ve come a long way from where I was a year ago and seeing that change is exciting. A few months ago, I considered high 11s and low 12s, especially on lead, to be too futuristic to take seriously. In hindsight, they were somewhat reasonably within my grasp for probably at least the past 6 months, if I’d developed a willingness to work on them. I don’t expect to be immediately a different climber upon having realizations of what would be beneficial to me. I still expect there to be some days where “the criteria for success is showing up.” But in the past month I’ve stopped having any thought of saying “I’m a bad climber.” Not just forcing myself to not say it when I think it, but not really even thinking it anymore. I used to say it all the time. My technique was often not great, and compared to a lot of the people I climb with - with 5+ years of climbing experience - it was awfully rudimentary. I spent a long time just learning to break the habit of believing every climb should be 100% frogged. Then there was a period of “Did you see that? DID YOU SEE THAT OUTSIDE EDGE?!” “LOOK AT ME, I’M FLAGGING!” I gradually started developing an ability to position myself more efficiently, and to get into those positions without being told, and without wasting energy in less efficient positions first. Now, my technique work feels like figuring out exact beta, not learning how to climb. I’ve realized from observing other people that nobody always knows exactly what body positions and technique to use on the first attempt. Maybe they don’t know on 5.13c whereas I don’t know on 5.11c, but I think a lot of this just comes with time and practice, and isn’t a skill that can be artificially accelerated.

In the coming year, my intention is to generally have a high 11 to low 12 project that I’m consistently working on at any given time, rather than ignoring projecting entirely or trying to split my effort between multiple halfhearted “projects” and not spending enough time on any one of them to really matter.


Yosemite Falls in July