and over and over and over and over... (you get the idea).
After spending a weekend grounded by the bad weather (I did realise too late I could have gone to New Mills and hung out under the bridge to boulder) I ended up watching lots of climbing film. This of course wasn't a bad thing but a lot of them seemed to feature some pretty hardcore sport climbing peoples redpointing hard routes. These people would spend days, months and even years going back to the same problem over and over trying to get it completed. What struck me was the level of commitment that they showed in pursuit of thier goal. Now for someone like me who tries to climb everything onsight and if that fails ground up it all seemed a little alien.
I was struck by a something Steve Maclure said (which went along the lines of) "people don't realise how much pressure falls on you when you're redpointing. When you're trying to onsight a route you either get up it first time or fail, and then the pressure is off. You've onlg got the one chance. But if you're redpointing a route and you've worked each section till you know it all and you're still failing on it, that massive pressure is still there and it increases everytime you think that maybe you can't do it".
I never really thought about all the effort that goes into a hard redpoint. We discussed redpointing at lenght and came to the conclusion that neither of us would be caught working routes like that. It wasn't until we ended up at Churnet the next day and went to ousal crag that it hit me. I work boudler problems all the time. Infact a spent about 4 hours working one problem at Wright's, only to head straight back there on my next free day to get it done.
Climbing is a weird obessive pastime. For some it is simply a sport, and by sport I mean a form of exercise that they are interested in but for others (inlcuding me) it's a more like a life. I tend to spend my time getting up early and going to bed late, doing a lot of driving. At the end of the day when I think about it, it's not actually that odd an activity to go back to the same place over and over to work a route or problem.
Here's some photos from churnet:
I was struck by a something Steve Maclure said (which went along the lines of) "people don't realise how much pressure falls on you when you're redpointing. When you're trying to onsight a route you either get up it first time or fail, and then the pressure is off. You've onlg got the one chance. But if you're redpointing a route and you've worked each section till you know it all and you're still failing on it, that massive pressure is still there and it increases everytime you think that maybe you can't do it".
I never really thought about all the effort that goes into a hard redpoint. We discussed redpointing at lenght and came to the conclusion that neither of us would be caught working routes like that. It wasn't until we ended up at Churnet the next day and went to ousal crag that it hit me. I work boudler problems all the time. Infact a spent about 4 hours working one problem at Wright's, only to head straight back there on my next free day to get it done.
Climbing is a weird obessive pastime. For some it is simply a sport, and by sport I mean a form of exercise that they are interested in but for others (inlcuding me) it's a more like a life. I tend to spend my time getting up early and going to bed late, doing a lot of driving. At the end of the day when I think about it, it's not actually that odd an activity to go back to the same place over and over to work a route or problem.
Here's some photos from churnet:
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| (View through the trees) |
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| (The little shelter that was here last time still stands) |
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| (The chalked up holds of the 7a traverse, something | I still can't complete) |
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