Brain Training

In the world of Rock climbing there are different levels of riskiness when you climb large walls. Top Rope is the safest, being secured for the entire climb, safely protected by a rope at the top of the climb. Next is Sport Climbing, or "Lead" climbing, for this type you take the rope up connected to a harness and clip the rope thru carabiners that are clipped to bolts drilled directly into the wall. Lastly we have "Trad" climbing (Traditional), this is the riskiest type of rope climbing  because you rely strong metal pieces that you place into cracks in the wall. The reason Trad is the riskiest is because it relies on the climber's knowledge of how to place gear correctly. If it's placed incorrectly and you take a fall, there's a chance for it to pull completely out of the wall and send you plummeting to the next piece of gear....or the ground. 

Something I struggled with when I first starting "lead" climbing outside was my mental game. I was pretty spooked on sport climbing anything outside for a while until I forced myself to overcome my fear. Trad climbing is a whole different monster of because the risk is there that the gear you place might come out when you fall. I've had kind of a love / fear relationship with trad climbing, where I really want to be a strong all around climber, but am nervous about taking the plunge into leading on trad. 

Quads were on fire after this one

Going into my 8th week of non stop climbing and traveling, I heard about a guy in my training program taking a trip out to the Witchitas for some Trad climbing. He gladly let me tag along for the trip and we headed out early Saturday Morning. We got slightly lost in our search for "The Narrows" and we were lucky enough to tack on some mountaineering training into our Trad day...I choose to stay positive about our 20min detour. 

After arriving to our wall and consuming several Peanut butter blue berry bagels (The official food of a climber who forgot his food) Zach got geared up and ready to rock on our first climb of the day, a 5.6. The climb was a Dihedral crack where the smooth face of the wall meets in a corner of the side of the cliff. Zach cruised up the climb placing gear every 6-10 feet or so, what we refer to as "plugging it up" with gear. 

Zach placing some gear in the crack. 

After Zach finished the climb Amanda "cleaned" the route on Top rope. I had danced around with the idea of doing the route of Top rope first just to get the moves kind of memorized in my head before taking the leap into actually leading the route on Trad. But I remembered my first time sport climbing outside, and how I had wussed off a 5.9 because I was too scared to fall. I knew I had the strength and the climbing knowledge to climb this route, but this would be a test of my mental fortitude. So I racked up and dove in head first. 

The climb is pretty vivid in my mind, as well as my thoughts while climbing, so I'm going to pull the curtain away and show exactly what goes through my head when climbing something that gets me a little spooked. 

I walk up to the first moves of the climb, check my knot on my harness, chalk my hands, grab the first hold and pull myself onto the face. Zach had told me on the ground that I want to be placing gear every 6 feet if I could. He had this kind of look on his face that was like "Well I hope he can do this". I get up to the first ledge about 7 feet high on the wall, and pull my sling from my back to across my chest to see which "Cam" will fit the crack best. After some messing around with it I get in a spot I'm comfortable with. I notice that it takes way longer than clipping some carabiners on sport climbing, and that my right leg is pretty tired already with a hot sensation hanging out in my thigh. I keep going on up, the feet are a little more slanted than I was expecting on a 5.6, and it had me taking some extra time placing my toes on specific spots. I throw my left hand high up on the next ledge and mantle onto the top of it finding a nice spot to place gear from. This was probably 10 feet above my last placement so I made a mental note to try to place a piece about neck level into the crack and another piece a full arm's length above it. I'm feeling slightly spooked at this point so I increase my focus by putting some thought into my breathing, letting everything else fade out with only my exhale filling my ears. I get about 8 feet up from my last Cam placement and get situated in this indentation in the wall. At this point my left foot is secured on a slightly slanted ledge but my right foot is completely smeared against the flat face of the wall. I pause for a moment and look down at my last piece of protection 8 feet below me.

There's a point my mentor Mario talks about when you do large multipitch climbs  he calls "The Point of No Return", meaning you've gone too far up, there's no way to down climb...Going up is the fastest and only way to get down. This realization hit me about 40 feet up this wall, There was no stopping, it was game time and I needed to move quickly and precisely to avoid getting too tired to climb this route. I plugged in a Cam into the crack about belly level and got a higher foot to place another one in a small roof crack above my head. I continued to the right side of the roof crack pulling myself onto the face of the wall. I noticed an "X" had been marked with chalk on a deep jug which means "DONT GRAB ME - I MIGHT COME OFF THIS WALL AT ANY POINT". However this jug...was the best jug of all time.. and the X had been placed weirdly and could've easily been meant to mark rock in the roof. I decided to place my left hand lightly in this jug, while getting a high right foot and grabbing a small ledge with my right hand. Delicately walking both feet onto the face of the wall, I grabbed a cam from my sling and placed it in the crack about eye level. I could see the end of the climb just 30 more feet up this wall I had climbed 60ish feet already.

I traversed over probably 5 feet and mantled onto a small ledge. I stood up carefully on the ledge, glancing over my left shoulder looking at my last piece about 9 feet down and to the left of where I stood. I leaned forward into the wall taking my hands completely off the wall for the first time in 70 feet. Simultaneously thinking, "Man it would suck to fall right here and whip into that roof" and "Is this what Alex Honnold feels like when he was free solo'ing El Capitan". I careful twist my hips to the right and step carefully across this half a foot wide ledge, using nothing but my feet and balance to get me across. I got over to a bulge of rock with a nice side crack in it and placed another piece of protection. My legs were pretty tired at this point and started to shake, or what we call "Elvis Leg". The top was only 15 more feet up this, and very featured with gigantic blocks of stone protruding from the otherwise clean face of this wall. I recognized that this would be the easiest part of the climb and didn't waste a second, feeling a surge of joy that I had only a few feet between me and my first Trad lead, I flew up the last section of the climb. 

I grabbed the top of the wall and clipped my "PAS" (Personal anchor system) to the bolts at the top of the climb and yelled "OK I'M ON ANCHOR" down to Zach. Something I try to keep in mind whenever I'm climbing is that you're not done until you're back on the ground. A lot of climbing mistakes happen because people get hyped up at the end of a route and forget that it's still dangerous until you're on the ground. I lock my carabiner, untie & feed the rope thru the chains. When I'm safely back on the ground I'm ecstatic. The feeling of being scared and overcoming it while you're in the moment is like no other. 

I've done a lot of sport climbing in the two years I've been climbing, and even done a second ascent on a 5.12, but I don't think anything I've done can compare with my 5.6 Trad lead. Something about being nervous about something and the laser focus you get because of it just makes it mean more. I meant to put a GoPro on my head before I went up, but completely forgot, and I didn't get any pictures of me climbing it because I think everyone just wanted to watch how it went haha. I almost like that a little more than having photos or video, because I'll always remember my first time trad climbing on a cold, windy, day in Oklahoma. 

The view from the top

Acceptable Risk

I’ve gone on about 25 trips so far in 2016, most of them being climbing trips, a few involving less climbing than I would’ve liked but everyone needs breaks sometimes. Rock climbing is an inherently dangerous sport, and we minimize all the risks we can but you can never take away 100% of the risk, and who would want to anyways. Part of the allure of rock climbing is the danger to me, the adrenaline rush. I never used to be the adrenaline rush guy, and I still don’t like roller coasters. But I love the feeling you get from managing the risk or relying on your skill and knowledge to navigate yourself safely through a scenario. 

    Climbing is relatively new to my life being that I started only 2 years ago and has become a huge piece of my everyday routine. I am only 21 years old and most of my friends are in University far from where we all grew up, but I’ve stayed home and gone to community college at night and worked full time for about 4 years now. I went to visit one of my friends who goes to school at Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX because I’ve been telling her since forever I’d come up and visit. A little background on my friend, She is in a sorority and lives with 5 other girls in a house near their school, all of which are also in sororities. I’ve never visited a University other than like SMU in Dallas ever, so I really had no idea what to expect and I didn’t really expect much..Lubbock is kind of a boring town in the middle of nowhere, Texas. I quickly got introduced to all the girls in the house and their cute dogs that get insane amounts of love (I wish I could be a dog in a sorority house). One of my favorite things to do with people is hear their stories, because it gives you such a good judgement of character of a person and they don’t even realize. The girls start retelling stories of crazy drunken nights, of Arrests, being detained, being so drunk they don’t remember the night, of horrible men, pretty much everything you can think of. And I was in awe at the insane crazy lifestyle they live, it really seemed out of this world to me I couldn’t even believe it. I like to think that I live a really exciting life. I go out every weekend and physically exert myself for 6-8hrs usually sometimes longer for the thing I love to do. Most of the time I’m doing things that if I hadn’t known and been trained to do them properly I could die. And people that are trained and have been doing these things for years still die. I think it’s insane hahah. I have even free solo’d 5.7s in Austin (nothing insane and I had a Personal Anchor System the whole time) but still I like to think I live a crazy life. But here I am sitting in a sorority girl’s room awe struck at the crazy life she lives. 

    Climbers have a term we use called “Acceptable Risk” and it basically means the risk you’re willing to put yourself in to enjoy yourself or complete a climb. Acceptable risk doesn’t just apply to climbing though, everyone makes choices in their life of the risks they’re willing to take. I’ll give an example: Last week in Horseshoe I was warming up on a 5.10a about 50ft, and had like 9 bolts with 2 anchors (11 quick-draws total). However being that it was a warm up route and me wanting to get on with my day I didn’t count the bolts or read the guide book and I only took up 10 “draws”. When I got to the 9th bolt on the climb I realized that I only had 1 draw and I still had 2 anchors to clip at the top. Between the 9th bolt and the 2 anchors there’s about a 10 foot section and below me (My last clip) probably another 6-10 feet. A made a decision to unclip the 9th bolt and “Run it out” to the finish. This means that had I fallen close to the Anchors of the climb I could have taken a roughly 20 foot fall, potentially breaking ankles, toes or worse if I landed incorrectly. But I recognized the risk in my action, and deemed it acceptable (All of this happening in about 10 seconds on the wall). Some people might hear taking a 20 foot fall and risking breaking bones to be absolutely insane, but for me it’s an acceptable risk. I trusted that I had the strength to finish the final 10 feet of the climb and so I went for it. The same can be said for my reaction to hearing the drunken nights from these sorority girls. It’s absolutely insane to me that these women are going out and drinking and driving, or getting picked up for drinking under the age and getting ticketed. But if you just analyze a little further, to them it isn’t that insane i’m sure. It all falls into the acceptable risk category. I just find it super unique that for someone like myself who considers what I do pretty crazy sometimes that I can’t fathom doing some of the things these young women do. But on the other side me saying that i’ve “free solo’d” a 5.7 (Meaning I had no rope to catch me if I fell) people would tell you that I’m an idiot for. Just remember that next time you hear someone telling you an Insane story that you can’t believe, everyone’s comfort levels are different!