The Way Up

This post is going to contain a little bit of a rant, so bear with me... I've noticed a trend in the last few weeks both outside and inside the climbing gym where I've heard almost every climb called "soft." I'm not saying that calling climbs "soft" is new, but for some reason it's become more frequent/noticeable and to be quite frank, it's been bothering me. And it's frustrating that I'm bothered by this, because I don't want to feel the need to question whether I'm actually getting stronger as a climber or not based on someone else saying that a climb is "soft" or "stout." But perhaps those are my insecurities speaking, and that's a discussion for another day... Now sure, some climbs are actually soft for the grade they've been given, but in my opinion there are a lot of climbs that are not "soft" but that instead play to the strengths of the climber that's calling them "soft....

For the crew I climb with, the start of October officially equals the start of climbing season in the Buttermilks. Come rain or shine, we'll make the trek to Bishop every weekend, wake up to the sweet smell of Black Sheep coffee , rub the bleariness from our eyes, and crush some absolutely stunning boulder problems (see Fig. 1). As you can probably guess, this season has been no exception, and Friday marked the first official day of the season for yours truly. Fig 1. Greg Horvath climbing on the back of the Grandpa Peabody. Photo by The Burrow Files . I hope they don't mind me using their lovely image. As with most seasons, there's always an acclimatization period during which you can't climb for shit because you've been lugging yourself around on plastic all summer, and during which you absolutely beat the fuck out of your fingers - and really everything else on your body. And while in many ways the start of this season was no exception (60% of my finger...

"Why do you climb?" The age old question, and one that most climbers I know struggle to give a simple answer to. I've had many a philosophical conversation around the campfire trying to formulate an easy answer to this question, but it usually comes out as an ethereal, jumbled mixture of personal goals and reflections, and we don't end up answering the question at all. The fact of the matter is that there is no simple answer - climbing has a far greater bearing on our lives and on the way we perceive the world than most of us are willing to admit or are able to explain. It is my personal belief that we don't fall in love with climbing just because it's fun, or because it helps us to set personal goals, or because it keeps us in shape, although all of those things factor into why we started to climb and why we continue to do so, but that we climb because of what it gives to us and because of what it teaches us about ourselves and about the world around us. ...

Some of you may know that I spent a great deal of the 2014 season climbing in the Land of Giants: Bishop, CA. More specifically, I committed myself to climbing  only  in the Buttermilks, an intimidating and breathtaking place where I learned the value of perseverance and was often humbled by challenging, technical highballs that forced me to face my fears and build the mental fortitude to overcome them. And when I say that I only climbed in the Milks, I mean that – not once did I venture into the tablelands. Contrary to popular belief, my choice to stay in the Milks was not because I dislike the Happies or the Sads, but because I wanted to turn the Milks into my home crag, which is something I’d never had before. I wanted to learn all of its intricacies, to live and breath its history, to acquaint myself with a community of like-minded climbers, and to hone my skills in a place that is frequently described as world-class by the climbing community. The Land of Giants - ...