Journeying

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A couple decades ago I had this idea to hike up the stream bed of a certain boulder-filled creek and do a “watershed study” in photographs.  That never happened.  But on a cold Saturday I decided I finally should.

It’s snowing.  I’m finding that hopping from damp, moss covered rock in the stream bed to damp, moss covered rock forces me to focus on my foot placements and balance.  I could have worn better shoes.  Or I could make perfect foot placements.  My feet feel rooted in the earth, but then I let my thoughts wander upstream and pondering what’s ahead and my foot slips on a wet rock.  I recover before my foot goes in the clear, icy stream, but only because my focus had only wavered for a split second and came right back into the moment.  I’ve felt the immediate danger of living in the future.  Of letting my attention dwell in a time that does not exist.

I’m revisiting the place where an unnamed stream exits the hillside from a cave mouth, and then a dozen yards away it returns into the hillside.  I’ve known of this place most of my life.  I’m only here for the second time.  It feels like a place of power.  And few know of it.  I fill up my water bottle and move on.

I try not to step in the sand.  I chose hard surfaces to walk on so as not to leave prints.  I look for perfect small white stones—quartz pebbles—that feel unblemished to my fingers.

I chose not to bring gloves, but then wondered if it was a mistake.  But I like the feel of the rocks under my hands as I climb upstream.  The cold doesn’t hurt me.  My hands are cold from touching the boulders and reaching into the icy water to retrieve pebbles, but my body pushes heat to them and in a few steps they’re warm again.

I see the tracks of other people.  I refuse to mingle mine with theirs.  We are not experiencing this place together.  Or the same.  I come to a place where it’s difficult to avoid the sand, so I make deliberate footprints.

I find a pebble that looks like it was a finger broken off a marble statue.  I hold it in my hand until it’s warm and feels as if it has a life of its own.

I have no destination.  I’m following the stream, but I am not trying to reach any certain point along it.  I do not know where or how this journey will end.  That’s odd for me.  Not having a goal is odd.

I’ve come to the place where I would have to get on the trail to continue.  So I will go back.  I’ve already seen more people than I’d like on this hike.

I find a pretty moss covered arete on a boulder.  I don’t want to clean it, that would ruin its beauty.  So instead of coming back with a crash pad and brushes I simply climb it in my mind.  I can feel the movement upward from where I touch the starting holds, cold rock, damp rock, but good places to put my hands and feet, I feel the swing of my body and the tension in my muscles.  I pull over the top and balance on the narrow summit.

A white pebble catches my eye.  One side of the pebble is perfect, polished, smooth, so delicately white it’s almost transparent.  Like a snowflake.  Like a feather.  The other side is rough, like gravel.  Like a tooth.  The pebble is me.

I’m back to the beginning and getting ready to step out of the stream onto the trail.  I felt the anxiety return.  I felt it when I stepped over the boundary between my world and everyone else’s.  I do not like this feeling.

This is a sacred place for me.  And yet it has been profaned; it is the heart of profanity.  People have intruded into this valley to collect more hashtags.  It was once a wild place few people ventured into.  Now there’s a trail.  Now there are well compacted campsites.  Now there are names.  

My journey has been long in reaching this place.  In some ways it started here.  Today isn't an ending.  It's simply a point along the circle of life: beginning and ending at the same time.  

The Way

I think my answers lie on a new path.  This is not surprising to me.  What is surprising is that it took me this long to find where to place my feet.  It’s been in front of me all along.

I’ve known this since early on in my ADHD journey—that this is not a “dysfunction” or a “disability.”  There is nothing wrong with me.  The world expects me to be a fish when I am a bird.  And if we’re being brutally honest (and why not, I’ve suffered silently long enough) the world expects me to be a well-conformed capitalist worker-drone when I am an adventurous soul who craves new experiences.

I’ve been going about it all wrong.  “It?” you might ask.  Life.  I keep trying to shoehorn my free spirit into an 8 to 4 job.  It’s never going to work. 

A long time ago one of my favorite songwriters released a song with the line:

"No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from"

I've used that line as a metric in the past to know when to move on.  It's served me well.  What's different now is that there are so many things I want to be free from that are sucking the life right out of me.

I want to be free of the mental clutter.  It's the search for solutions to this problem that have led me to the new answer.

Remnants of my Eagle Scout Project from 1992

Thirtysomething

 

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A post shared by Chris Chaney (@ascentionist) It was an ugly argument.  I don’t know that the worst verbal and emotional abuse I’ve suffered in my life hasn’t been from myself.  I jest, but it feels like there’s some truth to it.  But no malice.

While yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of my starting rock climbing, I simply didn’t want to climb.  It was a little cold.  I couldn’t wrangle up a partner to do anything roped.  The gravel roads in the National Forest are closed for the winter so I couldn’t get to places like Haystack, Courthouse or anywhere on Indian Creek in the time I had.  If I had realized sooner, I might have taken the whole day off.  I was going to just go home.  But my heart of hearts just couldn’t.  I needed to mark the day somehow.  Thirty years is nothing to sneeze at.

I opted to run up to Left Flank and hit the “Left Field” bouldering area past To Defy the Laws of Tradition, or to give the V2 under Wild Yet Tasty a go.  While I have spent countless hours on the left end bouldering area, I had never actually tried the legit boulder problem under the Table of Colors Wall.  I ran home to change clothes and I opted for the smaller crash pad.  I left brushes and developing kit all at home.

On the drive up I felt nauseous and like I wasn’t going to be able to keep my “lunch” down. All I’d eaten were two brownies I made in a batch from a box.  I used olive oil because I don’t keep other vegetable oil in the house, and they just didn’t agree with me.  I think it was the olive oil.

Anyway, I also worried it was a symptom of impending heart trauma as I am wont to do.  I’m sick and feel bad in that sense so seldom that when I do it always seems like something fatal.  I turned into it and throttled up. I figured if I was going to die, might as well be in the woods with a crash pad strapped to my back on the thirtieth anniversary of the day I started rock climbing.  Nineteen days before I turned fifty.

Anywho, I trudged up the trail as fast as I dared with a bum heart.  I traversed the crag from left to right, and as I approached the bend around to the Table of Colors area, I could hear voices.  Two guys were on Mercy, the Huff, and their dog was tied up right on top of the boulder problem.  I played my part as the introverted-Asperger’s-recluse-solo-boulderer, and with no more than a nod to the climbers walked over and dropped my pad ten feet under the slavering maw of a killer Pomeranian. 

I was annoyed.  It’s a crag on public land.  Why bring a yappy dog?  I get it on one hand--it’s a Thursday in January.  Who would even be around?  EXACTLY!  Used to I had the whole Gorge to myself after New Years until Spring Break or even a little later most years.  Now, there’s always someone.  Everywhere.

I decided I would work out the lower part of the problem and just avoid topping out or getting close to the top-out.  I didn’t have much daylight, and if I waited until conditions improved my window would close.

The guys got down from cleaning and one came and quieted and moved the dog.  He was personable and offered a spot.  I warmed up to them a little bit.  I understood it was late in the day and they probably hadn’t seen anyone else and why would it matter if they leashed their dog on top of an obscure boulder problem at a sport crag.  I couldn’t be mad.

I gave the problem about three solid goes, making progress on every attempt, and then I sat down to calm myself and get my thoughts and emotions in check.  I stretched a little and tried to focus on my breathing.

I got back on and tried it from the undercling start, but still botched the sequence to put me closer to the summit jug.  I realized my mistake even as I jumped back to the pad.  On the last go I started standing and reached up to the crux match from the ground and went from there.  I easily reached the top-out jug, but it felt frighteningly hollow.  After my days or rock cutting and rock work at Muir, I have a new appreciation for the relative strength of sandstone in the wild, so I was not confident in yarding on the big, positive hold without looking at what I was grabbing.

One of the other climbers had run over to give me a spot and was telling me I had it and to go for it, but I just didn’t feel good about it with the hollow flagstone and one lonely pad on the ground.  I lowered down as far as I could and dropped onto the pad.  It was a good effort, and the problem is worthwhile, but until I could look at the top-out from above, I wouldn’t be comfortable trying again.  I put on my approach shoes and scrambled up to look at it.  If I’d scoped it out first, I think I’d have gotten it that go easy.  There’s plenty of solid up there.

I opted not to get back on it yesterday, but that I’d go back again as soon as I could with a couple of pads.  I chatted with the two guys.  I mentioned that it had been thirty years since I started climbing.  It was the normal climber chatter really, but I’m glad I ran into them.  As solitary as I am—and comfortable being so—I know that I fare better when I behave in a positive social manner.  It’s just not my default. 

Zach, one of the other climbers (and Juan), mentioned bouldering and we got to talking about it and I said something about the “warm up” area left of To Defy.  He expressed an interest, so I told him a little about it.  When I’d packed up and was heading out, he asked if I was going over there.  The sun had dropped below the ridge over Military Wall, so I said probably not, but then when I got to the top of the approach trail out I decided I had enough time to run over there.  I didn’t intend to climb.

Years ago, I did spend a lot of time bouldering there and getting stronger.  I did a couple of fun traverses and even a few straight up problems that topped out on ledges.  Back then there was always chalk all over the wall there.  Last night there was no chalk.  That was a little surprising.  Though maybe it shouldn’t have been.

I ran my hands along the wall and the holds there.  One of my main climbing goals in the early 2000s was to complete a left to right traverse of that wall.  It was possible.  I was able to do every move.  I could send it to the crux move* in the middle including said move.  I could begin on the crux move and finish the traverse.  I think I was even able to climb to the crux, step off, and start again just after it and do the entire traverse.  I just never developed the full measure of endurance needed to send it in one go.  Or at least I didn’t try it when I had that fitness.  I guessed back then it might be V6.  That was harder than anything I believed I had been on.

These days I am aware I (unintentionally) sandbagged a lot of bouldering grades.  I was climbing harder than I thought.  Last night as I put skin to stone on that traverse I wondered if it's not too late to finally send that problem.  To gain that fitness back would mean I was a legit climber again, not faking my way up routes through familiarity alone.  I can be on the rock in thirty minutes from work.  If I ran up there on decent evenings, I could get in a solid hour-long session and be home by 6:00.  With its nice, sandy landing I don’t even need to take a crash pad—just shoes, chalk, and some small brushes. 

I felt like I was old and dying on the way in last night.  I felt more like my old self on the way out.

*The crux move on that traverse as I had worked it out was a drop into a sloper match.  Basically, from a halfway good hold you'd reach down to about waist level and pinch a sloper ledge.  Then you'd have to let go and grab next to it and control the drop.

XXX

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The only time I’ve been shot at in my life was thirty years ago today.  That sounds melodramatic considering the nature of the shot.  But it’s true, a guy shot at me and my best friend Andy from a quarter mile away.  We heard the bullet pass between us and then the report from down in the valley.

We both dropped to the ground and crawled into the woods from the open area on top of the southernmost of the See Rocks on the South Fork of the Red River.  We made our way back into the woods and down to the valley, across the field and back to my car where it was parked on the side of the road.  There was a note on my windshield that read:

If you don’t get permission it’s trespassing.

~ William King

I kept that note for a long time.  It was the only memento I had from the day I started rock climbing.  We weren't trespassing.  Andy knew who owned the land where we parked and crossed the fields and the rocks themselves are National Forest.  

Andy and I were at the See Rocks to climb.  I’d gotten the bug after seeing some rock climbers at Military Wall while hiking.  It was all I could talk about.  And Andy had scrambled around on the See Rocks growing up nearly in their shadow.  He suggested the See Rocks as an objective, and I was game.

We bushwhacked around through the Keyhole (the big arch which nuevo-archbaggers have misnamed) and on around the northwest end of the massif.

Andy had been up there with someone else and knew the way, so I trusted and followed him up a semi-exposed fourth class move to a higher tree ledge.  And then we launched up the exposed upper north face of the north rock.  When the ledges and handholds ran out we grabbed a steel cable dangling from the sky and yarded up and over a sheen of ice on the upper slabs.

Once on top we marveled at the view for a few minutes in the pale January sun.  And then reversed our route.  It was the only viable way down.  To this day I have no idea how the cable got up there in the first place.  Fell from a passing airplane?  Grew from a seed dropped by a bird?  Lassoed by space cowboys?  Maybe just some rednecks hauled a ladder up there.  There were some big brass orbs involved, let me tell you!

High from our experience we drifted over to the nice, exposed overlook on the southern rock.  Whereupon we were shot at.

It’s been an interesting adventure—this rock climbing.  There have been times in my life I’ve not climbed much.  Other times it’s all I can think about.  I’ve met many good friends and interesting people.  I’ve met some people I wish I hadn’t.  I’ve learned a lot about myself and about life in pursuit of summits.

Here’s to the next thirty years…

The See Rocks from the east

The Time Bandit Strikes Again

 

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I haunt these woods still. Twentysome years later and I'm still wrasslin' the same pebbles. It was a short week at work but long. I thought if I knocked off early and bouldered I might clear my head going into the weekend, but instead I just meditated longer on the big issue that's dogged me all week. It's all good; if not resolved, it's at least moved to a less contentious status.

I saw this arete a few days ago. I saw this arete twenty two years ago. For some reason I never got on it. I was too enamored with the other stuff I ended up developing in this area. But this line has been living rent free in my head this week despite the considerable bandwidth work has demanded from me.

So I played a little hooky and scrabbled up a little rock while totally not distracting myself from work woes. It's okay. I still enjoyed myself. The bummer is I ran out of daylight or I would have put up another problem or two. Maybe revisited some of the other area classics.

I was content as I drove out of the Gorge through the Tunnel and over to Miguel's.  Now I'm harassing Bean while she works as I wait on my standard: basil, black bean and green peppers.

Problem: Time Bandit V1

Area: wouldn’t you like to know 

The Reality of Now

 

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I'm alive. This is a gift many don't receive. I should not squander it on worry and regret. I should not impede living fully by doubting myself or fearing the outcome of any decision I make.

I've seen the coming of one more year. I could not have predicted this with any certainty even one day ago. It's a new month, a new week, a new day, a new hour, a new minute and a new second of life.

This is the only moment I can touch and experience—right NOW. Regret is decay of the past. Worry is the decay of the future. I must not let either of them take hold or they will decay the present as well.

Skittles

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 I dragged Tony back to Emerald City.  There was a problem I'd FAed as a stolen line in the wee early days of my bouldering career.  Back then me and my younger cousin Dustin were running around wallering all over boulders because we were too chicken to lead routes.  Except we did highballs with no crashpads and were typically more casual observers of each other's risky efforts than spotters.  Eventually we learned how to keep ourselves from getting smooshed by gravity.

I think I'd FAed Skittles solo one day, or I just happened to get on it first and flashed it.  But while I was on the uphill side of the boulder, probably with Tony or some of our other climbing friends Dustin had wandered to the downhill side of the boulder and was making some noise.  He insisted I come down and see what he'd found, and he needed a spot.  I was underwhelmed.  But I still ended up sending the problem before he got it.  

I called it Gimme One Reason in honor of the Tracy Chapman song which I had on heavy rotation at the time.  In my journal I described it as having "toothy pockets" and a "jugs-o-moss top out."  I'm certain I did no more cleaning than Dustin already had.  I also gave it low marks for quality and called it V1 in my very limited V-scale grading experience.  

I called most things I had to try more than once V1 at the time.  Things I had to revisit I called V2.  Multiple sessions were V3.  That scheme seemed to track.  When I was finally able to repeat established problems in other places my grading scheme seemed spot on or even a little stout.  Of course, now the younger generation has origins in gym climbing, and my grades all seem to clock in stout. 

This past winter when I started trying to re-establish the bouldering circuit at Emerald City Reason wasn't high on my list of priorities. But eventually I wandered down the leaf filled gully, through the whippet saplings, and rediscovered this lost treasure.  I scrubbed what I could from the ground, marveling that the problem has a fairly decent natural landing.  I went so far as to put a rope on it and cleaned everything as well as I could.  No more jugs-o-moss top out.

Solo, with a single pad, I gave it a whirl.  I worked out the low crux move.  The pockets are all turned the wrong way.  Shallow.  "Toothy."  I usually get two or three good burns before the skin on my fingers is shredded.  This wouldn't be as big a problem if I was just stronger. 

I've given it three or four good sessions.  Still haven't gotten it clean.  The last two times I went I had spotters.  Both times I warmed up on Skittles first.  I went with Tony and got to my current highpoint: the deep, positive two finger pocket just below the top out.  But as I went to reset my feet and step up to grab the naked top out jugs the thumb catch underneath crumbled a little bit and I suddenly came to full awareness of how high I was floating above the earth.  Gravity took notice of me and reached out with her scaly, monstrous hands.  I downclimbed a move and dropped onto the pads.  Shaken, but not stirred, I retired for the day and nursed my raw tips, throbbing with adrenalin. 

A week or so later I texted Dylan and Christian and asked what they were doing.  'Hiking' they said.  I indicated I would be at Emerald City and gave general directions to where I'd be.  I had a date with a boulder problem.

As I said before, I warmed up on Skittles (the video above) and found the original beta.  I'd re-sent it on my previous trip with Tony after working it a couple sessions but wasn't happy with the starting position.  The original line started pretty far right on the arete and stayed on it to the apex and then actually descended the left arete instead of topping out.  I originally considered it a traverse, not a straight up problem.  

The guys showed up right after I had moved my kit to the lower side of the boulder and was going to give Reason a burn.  Being the pals they are they offered a spot.  So I piled the pads, chalked it, and clambered up.  One failed attempt turned into two.  But then on the third shot I gained the positive two finger pocket but with the wrong hand.  And I bumbled the feet.  Down I came.

At that point my tips were shredded again.  I'd need a few days to grow back enough skin to try it again.  I'm trying not to use athletic tape as a crutch like I did in my twenties.  Many of my early bouldering ascents were with aid. If I'd not learned how to effectively tape my fingertips (oh yes, it can be done!) I wouldn't have sent a fraction of the stuff I did.  Am I proud of that fact?  I climbed it all.  That's all that matters. Even with tape I had to bite down and bear through the pain a lot.  I can only remember one specific instance when the tape caught on a crystal, and I felt like that's the reason I pulled off the move.  Can't remember which problem that was.  Maybe Gimme One Reason.

I've not been back since that day.  That was right before Thanksgiving and I've been knocking around Group W, and I rediscovered another great boulder at Emerald I've put some time into.  The weather and daylight aren't cooperating as well as we creep into winter.  I feel like I'll send Reason next session. I'll be smart and won't warm up on Skittles.  Or at least won't expend as much energy warming up.  I'll take some friends for the spot.  It'll go.  I'm certain.

Attempting Gimme One Reason
in July of this year

Postscript:

After I initially drafted this piece, I returned to Emerald City and met Dylan there.  Whilst hiking in with pads I stopped to lop some branches out of the trail corridor to ease the passage of my larger Mad Rock pad. Something pricked my right ring finger.  At first, I thought I had snagged a fiberglass splinter from the handle of the ole loppers, but upon closer inspection I realized I had, in fact, cut myself pretty deeply on the mangled magnetic security strip on said handle.  It bled like a sonufagun and throbbed mightily.

I mostly forgot about it after Dylan showed, but my efforts at sending Gimme One Reason were fraught.  I didn't warm up on a different problem.  I stretched, had three pads and a spot, and still failed to send.  The crux move for me is up high, cranking (or holding) a thick knurled crimp with the right hand and reaching somewhere with the left.  I kept sketching trying to sort out that last move to the top edge. And I never felt solid on it.  It's high enough off the deck I just didn't want to risk the fall.

When I got back home and was able to look at the cut closer with my reading glasses on I discovered it was really deep, and I'd also cut my pinky finger.  No wonder I couldn't crank and feel solid on it.

It's no excuse, but I just didn't know I was cut so bad.  If I had, I would have taped the fingers and cranked on.  I swear I'll get it next time.

Dylan however, did send it.  What was surprising was he said it's at least V2+ and maybe V3.  I called it V1 way back in '98.  And have still been thinking it a V1 that I've just had to work.  In the earliest days I was casting wild guesses about grades. Before 2000 I had no outside experiences with bouldering grades.  It wasn't until late 1999 when I visited Hound Ears, Grandmother, and Blowing Rock in North Carolina that I began to have a better idea what grades to give FAs.  I still make wild guesses.  At this point I've just been out of the game so long my frames of reference are gone.  And apparently many of my "benchmark" problems may have not been accurately graded.

Dogfight

Another old video.  This problem is truly obscure.  I had to crawl across a fallen tree with my crash pad, bushwhack up a steep slope, and hike in a little ways before I found this and the nearby boulder with Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster on it.

As I worked out the moves prior to the FA (the video was from a few years later) my two dogs ran around tussling with each other under the roof, on my pad, bumping me and scattering my gear everywhere.  They weren't trying to hurt each other, it was just typical brother dog behavior.

The moves on Dogfight (or Dogfighter as I sometimes think of it) were a lot of fun.  If this problem were in an established bouldering area or near some high traffic crag or nearer a road it would be a quick classic.  As it is, it will likely never see any traffic other than what I take to it.  When the Forest Service changed 9B it made the walk even longer.  

As obscure as this one is it lives fondly in my memories.  My dogs are long gone.  I miss them as well.  I don't have the heart to delve into those stories, but this boulder problem isn't a bad memorial to them.  They shared many good adventures exploring with me.  Maybe it's time to revisit it. 

Pocket Wocket

This is a traverse I found and worked when I was in my twenties and a gumby climber.  It took six sessions working it to be able to pull off the drop-in move.  The video was created nine years after the FA and seventeen years ago.  The original FA was in 1997.

I wouldn't have considered myself a boulderer at the time.  But I became obsessed with this elegantly simple line.  Traverse the bullethole pockets on a mostly blank face, slightly overhung with non-existent feet in an arching line to a big move down to a four finger pocket and then a nice jug rail.  I added an extension beyond the original problem which topped out in a nearby rockhouse later.

The movement feels pretty cool.  The setting is nice and quiet.  No one knows about this place.  Watching this old, poor quality video makes me want to slim down like a model and refilm myself climbing it now.

Since I did the FA (and even since I filmed this) the Forest Service has gated the road.  It used to be a really short walk.  It's not a long walk now, but the old gravel road has grown up with weeds and a summer jaunt may be a tick-filled affair and simply not worth it.

The area has a climbing history before my time.  Rumor has it Porter and pals used to go up there and shoot their guns.  As far as I know it's always been known as the Gun Crag.  There's a little bit of roped development there, including a 30 year old sport route that goes at 5.11 and seemed pretty fun as I remember it.  There are two stripped 5.10s Tony and I did.  We called them DayQuil and NyQuil because he was fighting some bug when he bolted them.  They were worthwhile outings.

This is also the location of Dario's first FA.  He may not remember it, but I bolted a pre-Muir Valley 25' route with four bolts and let him get the first lead of it. We called it Ventura Boulevard.  His sister Sarah was with us that day.  Dario was maybe twelve years old.  

Wocket in My Pocket is one of my favorite problems.  I'm certain it was my first V3-V4.  It was way harder than anything else I'd climbed when I sent it.  It has a sublime draw.  Since I came across this video on my computer a few days ago I've thought about it frequently.  Maybe it's time for another visit. 

Kaizen

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 “Continuously improve. Constantly strive to improve across all areas of your life. Small changes accumulate and make all the difference.”

I found Group W Boulders many years ago. I must not have seen the real gems at that time—War Pigs and the Wildflower Boulder—because it wasn’t until 2020 in the middle of the Covid pandemic that I returned. Why I chose this remote area when there weren’t that many people around…anyway, when I walked up on the War Pigs Boulder I knew I had to find it somewhere deep inside my flabby self to start climbing again. It’s one of the prettiest boulders I’ve ever found.

Sometime after this rediscovery I was flipping back through my climbing journal notebooks (which I transition from to a word doc in the early aughts) and saw a dot and a note in this area on a map I’d taped to the journal that simply said “Boulders”. I have no recollection of seeing boulders in that drainage, which is odd, though way back I obviously didn’t have a cell phone to take photos of.

The rediscovery happened right after Thanksgiving of 2020–three years and a few days ago as I write this—and I had recently watched Alice’s Restaurant. Hence the name…Group W Boulders. I decided each boulder should have a “w” name and originally was going to give every problem a “w” name but quickly realized that would not only be stifling to my creativity but also difficult.

The first two were Widowmaker (for a dead tree blocking a prime line) and War Pigs. Then I discovered an amazing boulder I’m calling Wildflowers but which currently has no established problems on it. It dominates the main cluster of boulders which include Wabi-Sabi, White Elephant and Willard Boulders. These all do have established problems. I believe the total for the whole area is fourteen with a lot of potential for more.

I may have passed on the area when I first saw it because back then I didn’t clean lines or boulders like I do now, and they may have just seemed too dirty or too much work to snip back the rhodo enough to lay down a crash pad. War Pigs was hidden when I re-found it, but I pushed into the rhodo and was ecstatic at what I’d found. Truth is…there may be some more gems in the thicket up the slope from War Pigs.

There are some problems on it I will get with work. I’ll have to get stronger. I’ll have to get back to a mental state of being able to push myself over a couple of pads. But my secret weapon these days? Top rope solo. I never worked boulder problems with a rope when I was younger. I definitely should have. And I knew how, and frequently did roped routes lead rope solo or top rope solo. I did that long before it was cool. I had an original Gri-gri I’d modified for that purpose. Then I bought a Silent Partner. It’s extra weight and bulk in my crashpads, but the peace of mind it offers is worth the extra leg workout and sore neck.

My progress is slow. In some ways it feels like not only have I experienced a setback in fitness and skill, but I went further down below the fitness and skill I started with as a beginner. It’s been much harder for me to reinject myself into climbing than it did to learn it to begin with. The only advantage I seem to have now is muscle memory. But weak and taut muscles have a hard time returning to younger shapes and configuration. I’m trying. Little by little I’m trying.