A Numbers Game

Malham Cove

Its been a while since I last wrote one of these, because it seemed to me that what I was doing with my climbing wasn’t that interesting (if it ever was!). In the first month I was in Leeds, I spent probably over £100 in fuel driving to and from Malham. The vast majority of that time I spent either warming up, resting, or hanging off one of the four bolts on Raindogs. It was a fairly big change to how I’ve always climbed; a trad climber at heart, I’ve always preferred to ‘get some mileage in,’ do as many routes as I could in a day. The concept of leaving the crag without having done a single route was anathema to me. But Malham was a big reason for moving up here. I absolutely love it there and recognised that I wouldn’t really mind projecting something there because its such a nice place to be. The river bubbling up from below, the sense of community on the Catwalk, the ubiquitous polish- and of course, the predictable, ever-dry conditions. 

I wanted to test myself and see how hard I could try, which I’d never really done before. I’ve plateaued as a trad climber and have been stuck there for years. Its that E3/4 level; the point at which trad climbing starts getting properly physical and fitness becomes a major issue. Up until now I’ve got by in trad climbing through climbing quickly and being brave. The routes I want to do require more than that, even the bold ones. I actually needed to be fitter and stronger rather than just pushing thoughts of falling off to the back of my mind. So in an attempt to make this quantum leap of fitness happen, I decided to devote some serious time and effort to sport climbing and bouldering.

That said, I’d be a liar if I said that the love of trad climbing and a desire for self-improvement on that noble altar were the only reasons. There was a much simpler, baser, grubbier motivation, I admit it; I wanted to climb some harder routes, bigger numbers. But what for? I’m no superhero, I’m not going to climb anything earth shattering, so why was I so fixated? I wanted to climb 8a- there I said it. No one likes admitting to grade chasing, but I’d bet everyone has done it at various points. We like pushing ourselves, because climbing is a much more powerful experience when you feel on the edge of falling off and you get a little scared. It would be an act of denial to ignore the role that ego plays in climbing I think, and my ego wanted the balm of at least trying to climb an 8a. 

Anyway, I did. It took a while, 9 sessions of swinging around before I made the final grab to the chain and clipped the belay. It really is a fucking great route by the way, and I really enjoyed the process of redpointing it; working it out, micro-beta adjustments, realising I could actually do it and the way the route, the movements crept into my mind no matter what I was doing during my rest days. But again- I’m saying it was great, the rocks great, the climbings great- but if I’m honest I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I wanted to climb 8a. So what does that say about me and my motivations, about sport climbing in general?

Theres a lot to be said for self-improvement; if we care even an iota about our climbing performance, that’s the drive behind it I think. We’re basically all trying to the best climber we can be, within reasonable limits of dedication- and everyone has a different definition of reasonable dedication! You hear stories of people, normal people, cutting out alcohol completely, following special diets, religiously following a monkish training regime in pursuit of their goal. We all know them. Fair play to them, but that’s not for me. The day I can’t have a beer in the evening if I want one, or I won’t go down the pub when everyone else is, I’ll know I’ve taken it too far. I like the feeling of trying hard, and pushing myself further than I have before, but I’m not convinced I care enough to take it that far. 

Maybe that’s the difference between those that do and the rest; the rest of us think ‘ah, I could do it if I tried but I don’t want to.’ We slip into that safety net, comfort blanket and reassure ourselves that we’ve got the ability; we’re just choosing not to. ‘I can give up smoking/drinking whenever I want…’- but they don’t. And we don’t push ourselves. And that’s fine, because theres no better or worse, right or wrong, theres just different motivations at different times. Right now I’m sport climbing and bouldering and I’m doing it to try and push myself more than I have in the past, take myself a bit closer to my personal limit. But I won’t do it forever; it just fits this stage of my life. I’m sure I’ll be back to rambling around on trad soon, which lets face it is what I love the most anyway, and its more than likely this interlude of sport climbing will have made not one iota of difference to my trad prowess, such as it is. 

Even trad is a numbers game really. First HVS, first E1, first E2… It all is. Climbing is an individual sport but its still competitive; we’re just competing with ourselves, with our egos. Just occasionally we do something we didn’t know we could and it makes it all worth it for a short time. Then the system resets, and the question gets asked again- ‘So what’s next?’

One of many redpoints!