What, you may ask, do those two words have to do with one another? Well, I’m the dinosaur who took two newbies out to go climbing. As they described it, they had climbed two or three times each indoors but never outdoor and I was the “pro”*. There was a little fear of heights, a little curiosity, some determination, and a good amount of enthusiasm. Father and I attend the same church. His daughter came in to town specifically for this outing. It was cloudy and uncertain when we met at the rendezvous point, but as we traveled up the mountain we could see the sun shining on the side of the mountain where I knew we would be climbing. It turned out to be both a beautiful and pleasant day with plenty of challenge and a measure of success.
The next picture is very instructive to those who have not climbed before. At any level of climbing, you reach a challenge point. The pose reveals the intensity. The facial expression shows the focus and goal. Sometimes it is fun to just cruise up a climb, but challenge, getting shut down, and overcoming the by problem solving and focus are major draws to climbing. Add to that training for strength and technique in order to up your game, and you have many of the central components of good climbing.
I must give credit to the young lady with the iPhone for the great pictures. Indulge me for a moment in a sequence of shots on one climb that I did.
In this next shot, notice the rope going through the carabiner at my left hip. The carabiners and “dogbone” in combination are called a quickdraw. It is attached to a bolt in the wall that protected my move over this small roof. This style of climbing is called sport climbing. You can see other bolts of an adjacent climb at the right.
The next few moves involve crimpers, small fingertip holds for one to four fingers.
The picture below gives a sense of pause which actually happened. Sequence of which hand or foot and in which order the holds are used is important in climbing.
The hardest part of the climb, upon which the climb is rated, is called the crux (from crux ansata, literally “cross with a handle”; very appropriate for a difficult move on a difficult hold). This one relates to the smallness of holds as well as the long reach up left to a crimp. Don’t be impressed since it is only a 5.10b climb, far below world class 5.16.
Everyone was all smiles and we enjoyed the day. They even said they would like to go again.
*”You are to us”, the protested when I said I was nowhere near that.
CreatorWorship 
New Rock
Posted in Climbing, Cultural commentary, General, Outdoors, Photo, tagged Climbing, Outdoors, Photos on August 11, 2017| Leave a Comment »
It’s a pity when life gets in the way of blogging (just kidding!). But I have so many thoughts and experiences from the summer that I could blog for quite some time. It is not likely to happen as I see more things happening soon, but that’s OK.
I did want to share a few thoughts and pictures. I don’t often suggest books for several reasons. I do more technical reading than reading for pleasure, and frankly many books don’t meet my high standard of what I would unreservedly pass on to those I call friends, or enemies for that matter since I want them to one day be friends. A book that I can enthusiastically suggest is “The Book That Made Your World, How the Bible Created the soul of Western Civilization” by Vishal Mangalwadi. Because of his culture and his faith he simultaneously looks at the West as an outsider and insider at the same time. I keep having the feeling that he is correcting much error from lies our culture has fed us about how we got to where we are. He uses personal experiences and copious quotes to show the deep imprint of the Bible on western culture. I think that you will hear more about it here once I am finished with it.
My friend, colleague, and climbing partner, CC, took me to two boulders I’d never been to before. In fact, he had only been there a few days before with another climbing buddy for the first time cleaning about ten problems, laying a thick base of branches in a wet spot, and clearing part of a large fallen tree. I was privileged to try out the new rock. I like to go back to old familiar routes, but there is a particular excitement about trying new routes, and particularly ones that haven’t been climbed before. I was definitely not climbing at the top of my game, only topping out on a V1 and 3 V2’s. I tried two V4 and got shut down. Both problems involved a gaston with my left hand that I could not stick. It has challenged me to train that weakness. On the second one I discovered that if I did a side pull with my right hand instead, I could top out to the left much easier. We both agreed that it would rate as a V2. I decided to name it “Easy Out”. The two pictures are of me on the right sidepull and the topout. We saw several Cardinal Flowers in the wet, rich spots by the creek. I definitely want to go back, and hopefully clean some problems on new rock myself. (Photo credit: CC with his phone)
Lobelia cardinalis
Taking it “Easy..”
“Easy Out”
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